


No Brakes

by glowstick_of_destiny



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Science Bros, Slow Build, TW: Panic Attacks, also something of a FrostIron one night stand because of reasons, attempts at humor, eventual science boyfriends, tw: alcohol, with a large serving of angst and feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-04 17:37:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 26,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowstick_of_destiny/pseuds/glowstick_of_destiny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony doesn't have the best reputation for careful deliberation or peaceful cohabitation.  Bruce doesn't have the best track record for playing house without breaking hearts, or Harlem.  But they do have Netflix, science, and the Earth's other four mightiest heroes to help them out-- and that might just be enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shock to Your System (in which there is a shitshow, but it's not [entirely] Tony's fault)

“Pep?” Tony inquires of the closed door. Three months with Pepper has taught him that if he barges in unannounced, the chances of being met with high-heeled-shoes-turned-projectiles are pretty high. And he just doesn’t think he could work an eye patch the way Fury does if that goes south. 

No reply. “Pepper, can I come in?” 

He opens the door to find Pepper still sitting at her desk, her back to the door and a dense document up on her screen. Which, in and of itself, isn’t weird; Pepper works constantly. The weird thing is the way she’s definitely still in her work clothes and how her hair is definitely still up in the work-only ponytail when they’re supposed to be heading out for a romantic dinner for two in T-minus five minutes. And Pepper doesn’t do weird. Pepper does deadlines, micromanaging, perfectionism. With Pepper, weird means bad. 

“Hey, are you ok?” he begins, and then barrels on without really waiting for an answer. “Is it about going out? ‘Cause we can totally go to a different restaurant if you want. Or stay in. I hear there’s a pretty nice view from the top floor. And we can still have champagne. I think. There was champagne this morning. But Thor did say he wanted to try the golden ambrogia of many bubbles. Only Clint’s supposed to be babysitting him, and I’m hoping he’ll recognize that letting a demigod get drunk in my house is a bad idea. So 88% chance there’s still champagne. Ok, this is Clint we’re talking about. 50% chance there’s still –”

“Tony.”

“Yes? Is that a no on the champagne front?”

“Tony, listen.” Pepper swivels her chair around to face him and he takes in the red eyes and the places her concealer has rubbed off like she’s been blowing her nose and fuck, this is much, much worse than he’d thought.

“It’s not about going out tonight. It’s about–” she pauses, seems to notice the vice grip she has on her wrist, loosens her fingers only to move both of her hands to the edge of her chair and grip that with the same intensity. “It’s about us. I love you and the last thing I want is to hurt you, but this isn’t going to work, and it needs to end before I do something unforgivable. And it’s – it’s my fault, so it’s my responsibility to make sure that doesn’t happen.” 

Tears are threatening at the corners of her eyes. But she holds onto her composure, looking straight at him, expectantly, with what he’s learned is the “now it’s your turn” face. That’s probably his cue to say something. Something reassuring, something nice, something to smooth the situation over so they can both leave with some dignity. 

“Right.” He takes a deep breath which has absolutely none of the calming effect he’s looking for. “Saving me from something unforgivable and all that. An adjective, I might add, that absolutely no one would use to describe breaking up with me on our anniversary. Less than a week after I almost died. Because that’s merciful – altruistic even – when you compare it with the only apparent alternative – that if you’re forced to be with me for a second longer, you’ll do something terrible.”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“That’s what it boils down to, isn’t it? You don’t have to sugarcoat it for me. I mean, the guy who was the closest thing I’ll ever get to a dad tried to kill me a few years ago. Twice. I think I can handle you being blunt with me. I get it – the allure of dating Ironman wore off, you realized you can’t stand me, we break up. That’s simple enough. Where I got lost is how that makes you the good guy.” 

“Damnit, Tony! Get your head out of your ass. I loved you and you’d have to be stupid or blind not to see that. And being with you wasn’t easy, but working at it was worth it because I thought that you were worth it. And then something happened, which believe it or not had nothing to do with you. It changed a lot of things, and that means that I can’t be with you anymore because it wouldn’t be fair to either of us. And believe me, this would be a hell of a lot easier if I could explain exactly what’s going on to you right now. But I if I did that, it would only hurt you, and I happen to still care enough about you to not want to do that. I’m not a saint, Tony. I can’t do everything right by you. But I can take care of me and try to control the collateral damage for everyone that I care about, and that’s what I’m trying to do here.”

There’s a small voice at the back of his mind telling him that the few thoughts currently competing for space in his head are probably not the take away here. But since when did Pepper say “ass,” much less speak in Fury-isms? And was Pepper trying to roll up what she had to say in the most patronizing packaging possible, or was that just a natural perk of being the responsible one in a relationship? And fucking hell, Loki had been doing it all wrong because apparently all you needed to bring Tony Stark to his knees was a little uncharacteristic bluntness and heavy use of the past tense. 

“Gee, Pepper. Thanks. Now that you’ve explained your side of the story, I’m beginning to see the light. And I’ll bet you feel a lot better, having set the record straight. Plus, since everything you said is true and from your heart, you’ve just earned yourself a get out of jail free card for your conscience. Because if once upon a time you thought I was a worthwhile way to spend your precious time, that totally cushions the blow for telling me I’m not anymore. If you still care enough about me to refuse to tell me why we’re breaking up, that’s obviously sufficient moral compensation for whatever questionable motivation you’re hiding. And if you’re only trying to do what’s best for you, who cares how many other people you hurt along the way? Of course Tony will understand that sort of reasoning – up ‘til a few years ago, he earned his living by designing killing machines and he’s still a self-centered asshole in his time off. Well, hate to break it to you, babe, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t get yours and walk away without any blood on your hands. But you know what, that’s fine. I hope you and whatever the hell this big change you can’t tell me about is are very happy together. And I hope to god I don’t walk in on you two fucking on the kitchen table, because— ”

“Get. Out.” Pepper’s voice was harsh and there was an awful coldness in her eyes that was eerily familiar and utterly terrifying. “Now.”

Slamming the door as hard as he could on the way out isn’t Tony Stark’s proudest moment, but it does make him feel a little better. That is, until the noise jogs his memory and he realizes that the only other place he’s seen that terrifying empty coldness in someone’s eyes is when he was looking at Natasha Romanov.


	2. I Can't Take It (in which complications arise, ensue, and are overcome )

“Bruce?” The inquiry is followed by a few knocks on the door and Bruce Banner nearly falling out of peaceful warrior pose. Nearly, but not quite. Having undertaken insane amounts of yoga training in order to better manage gamma-radiation-enhanced anger management issues did have its perks.

The great thing is, Bruce muses as he eases out of the pose and makes his way to the door, that the fact that Barton’s made it past made it past the DNA-sensitive security system locking off his floor from the rest of the building – a precaution he’d refused to stay in the tower without – wasn’t terribly jarring, or even surprising. Having the man call him by his first name was.

He’s been living in the same house as the man for five days, but he’s seen him very little and spoken to him even less. Barton’s been keeping to himself, not even coming down for meals regularly. He can’t really blame him – he might’ve been doing the same, had tried to, on the first day, but thanks to no small amount of badgering on the part of one Tony Stark, he’d found himself spending most of his time out of his room and around others. Well, most of his time with Tony, looking over a new schematic for the tower’s generator together, losing track of time as they worked in adjacent labs, having the man burst in to tell him about a new breakthrough or to offer him some variety of fruit when he was fairly certain Tony himself hadn’t eaten a meal that day. But Barton hadn’t had that, and he’d had a lot on his plate.

So Bruce isn’t really surprised when his visitor doesn’t spare any words in greeting or by way of explaining his presence. “How good are you at feigning surprise?” 

“Decent? I don’t know. Why?” 

“There’s a situation I’d like to make you aware of. Which neither of us is strictly supposed to know about.”

“Uh, ok. Sure. Shoot.”

“Tony and Pepper broke up.” 

“Well, shit. But, uh, you’re telling me because…?”

“Damage control?”

“I… yeah, heightened emotions and all, I get it.” He gives a wry smile, his hand going to the back of his neck reflexively. “I’ll remove myself from the situation. Thanks, Barton.” There’s no excuse for the way those two little words get to him, even when he knows they’re predicated upon pragmatics and regard for the safety of everyone in the tower. No sturdy explanation for how easily they strip away the new clothes and calm, casual demeanor he’s adopted since he moved in and reveal him as the monster and the liability he really is. The way they feel like a new, sharp knife twisting in an old wound. 

“Fuck, no, no that’s not what I meant. Damage control for Tony. Bit of clusterfuck when he – well, the last time he got bad news, according to Nat. The man doesn’t really do anything half-assed. Guess the idea is, if you know what’s coming, you can get the hell out of the way. Or, if you’re dumb enough to stick around, not take it personally. Not just you, everyone who’s moved in. Thor’s really the wild card here. Fuck knows what dating’s like in Asgard, but the way he goes on about honor and tradition, someone needs to break the whole they were banging but now they’re not together thing to him pretty gently. And without Tony’s involvement.”

That startles a laugh out of Bruce. “It could be worse. Rogers could be here, too.”  
Barton grins. 

“Actually,” Bruce begins, taking a deep breath, “If you survive breaking those glad tidings to our friendly thunder god, I’m making curry for lunch. And I’ve gotten used to making Thor-sized portions, so I’m sure there’ll be enough if you want to join us.”

“Yeah, I would. I mean, I’d be there anyway. Tony said he’d build me a shooting range if I stopped Thor from getting at his liquor or breaking any more of his tech. If you ask me, he had it coming. He knew introducing Thor to Netflix was a calculated risk. Anyway, I’m sort of shadowing him, and the man does not miss a meal. But thanks.”

And if he’s grinning from ear to ear when Clint leaves, well, he can blame that on the mental image of Thor discovering moving pictures.

His newfound happiness is short-lived, anyway. Tony and Pepper broke up. What the hell is he supposed to do with that? He concludes that heading down to the state-of-the-art lab he still can’t really believe is his to check on some tests is a much, much better plan than dwelling on the alarmingly complex feelings he has about that development.

He’s quite unprepared for finding a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist very much passed out in the lab adjacent to his. Sure, Tony uses caffeine as a substitute for sleep pretty gratuitously, but he hadn’t actually succumbed to his sleep debt in the lab, not while Bruce was there. Which, now that he thinks about it, is probably because Pepper was there to come drag him off to bed. Oh. 

Besides, somehow, Tony fast asleep slumped over a desk under several screens full of complicated 3-D diagrams is kind of endearing. He opens the fingerprint-activated reinforced glass partition between the labs and makes his way into Tony’s with the intention of finding something vaguely resembling a blanket, because he knows all about the jarring disorientation of waking up somewhere you don’t expect to be, and it’s even worse when you wake up freezing.

Which is when he catches sight of the sizeable, empty bottle of scotch lying uncapped on the desk and his entire body seizes up. His heart rate skyrockets without warning. A vein pulses in his forehead and cold sweat trickles down his neck. His breath is coming fast and shallow, but he can’t get enough air. And he can feel the Other Guy stirring, dangerously close to his consciousness. 

It takes every bit of his training to turn away and walk back into his own lab, and his hands shake as he finds the button to close the partition. He slumps into a chair, bent over double with his head between his legs. He takes deep, slow breaths and counts to twenty as he exhales. Long minutes pass and he still feels like he’s suffocating. In the back of his mind, he knows he isn’t really dying. Knows he probably isn’t even going to Hulk out. Knows that with each breath, the Vagas nerve is steadying his breathing, and eventually, he’ll be ok. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t make it any easier or any less excruciating. He tries to focus on the breathing, on the counting. Finally, after what seems like ages, his heart doesn’t feel as if it will beat out of his chest and his breathing is no longer suffocatingly shallow. 

This is different, he tells himself. This is Tony. He didn’t hurt anyone, didn’t endanger anyone else because, by his own design, he wasn’t around anyone else when he was drinking. He didn’t get out of control, didn’t even make a mess of his clothes or the work station. 

His hands are still shaking when he opens the door to his bedroom.

It isn’t until a few hours later, when all coherent thought is drowned out by his muscles screaming in protest, when the effort not to collapse as he holds a pose is a battle against the laws of physics and biology, that he feels something akin to normal again.


	3. The Cure (in which it becomes apparent that Houston, we have a problem, but also a super secret assassin archer to help solve it )

Tony Stark awakens to a deafening THWACK. The resulting startled spasm is hardly elegant, but more importantly, is pretty fucking high up there on his list of absolute worst ways to wake up. The abrupt movement sends a sharp burst of pain through his head, set off nicely by the dull pain everywhere else in his body. Blinding light hits his eyes like Chlorox. And the offending projectile seems to be an arrow that’s missed his head by inches. 

The arrow in question has a small, hot pink note attached to it that reads simply: “We need to talk. My room. Now.” 

He stares blankly at the offending piece of paper for a good thirty seconds before his hangover-fogged brain decides to throw him a bone. Right. He’d been drinking. Because everything was terrible. He’d been drinking in the lab. Initially because then when Pepper asked Jarvis where he was, Jarvis would say he was in the lab, and she would think he was working, not drinking, because he was fine. Absolutely fine. But it had also been a presciently awesome idea because by the time he’d found the second bottle of scotch, he’d had a rather brilliant revelation about the nature of the fabric of space and time.

Also, there’s an arrow embedded in his stainless steel desk. A fucking arrow. He’s going to fucking murder Barton. 

Hauling his ass out of the chair and all the way to the elevator and all the way to Barton’s room is not only excruciatingly painful and exceedingly strenuous, but also totally unnecessary since texting exists. He plans to tell Barton as much, along with demanding why in God’s name he needs to be awake right now if the city isn’t burning to the ground, but he never gets the chance. The door swings open before he can knock and he’s met with a very displeased-looking, and significantly more threatening than he remembered Clint Barton.

“We nearly got a meet and greet with the Hulk this morning,” Barton says. “You know anything about that?”

“Good morning to you, too. And I’ve been unconscious since fuck knows when and distinctly recall having programmed Jarvis to immediately alert me, not you, to any potential surfacings of the Other Guy, so no, I don’t.”

“Well, I woke up to Jarvis telling me Bruce’s vitals were off the fucking chart, so that was a thing that nearly happened. Guess since you were out of commission, Jarvis decided to tell me. AI and all. Anyway, I get a wakeup call that Bruce is about to Hulk out in your lab. Your lab. With you in it. I’m thinking this had something to do with you.”

“Usually, yes, pissing people off is an area of expertise. But first of all, Bruce. Man of science, speaks my language, doesn’t make me want to bang my head against the wall the way most of the other people currently squatting in my house do. Also, turns into a big green rage monster when he’s angry. Not really a probable target for that kind of talent. Besides, remember that part where I was asleep and thus physically incapable of being at fault here?”

“Right. Ok, so he’s in your lab, you’re there but unconscious, nothing but lab stuff there to provoke him, why’s he hulk out? You want to help me out here?”

“Well, me, lab stuff, and scotch. Or rather, a bottle with absolutely no more scotch in it. Which is both a tragedy and the only part of the equation that’s different than usual. Only I’m not seeing how that’s… sonuvabitch. Do you have access to Bruce’s file, or am I going to have to do this the hard way?”

 

-.x.-

 

“Ok, this Ross character is a dick, were fifteen pages really necessary to get that point across? Wait, this part might actually be helpful - says here his dad has a history of arrests for disorderly conduct, a few charges for resisting arrest, one for assault, then – Jesus fucking Christ – says he’s convicted of manslaughter in ’82. Does that sound like a violent alcoholic to you?”

“That’s a big leap. It doesn’t say anything about alcohol use in there.”

“Yeah, well. You think Bruce is going to absolutely lose his shit when he sees an open container and a guy who’s clearly had too much to drink – knowing he needs to control himself or he’s going to go all green and not so jolly on us – without a damn good reason?”

“Well, fuck. Looks like you’re a terrible host.”

 

-.x.-

 

“Tony.”

“Augh,” he replies, pointedly, refusing to lift his still-pounding head off the desk.  
“Don’t make me get Thor.”

“Ok, fine,” he begins, and finally sits up. Which Barton better appreciate, because his head certainly doesn’t. “You’re right. I can’t keep Bruce here and get drunk off my ass. And I’m not making him leave – where the fuck is he going to go? Back to Kolkata or some other place with fuckall for protection against deadly diseases, not to mention basic amenities or the resources a mind like his should have at his disposal? Back on the run from that sonuvabitch Ross? And, I mean, the army, but out of the two, Ross sounds like the bigger threat here. Fifty bucks says Bruce was banging his daughter or something, because seriously, no one’s gotten that worked up about a fugitive criminal since Javier. It’s just not natural. Point is, Bruce is staying here as long as he wants to. But that doesn’t mean we need to go all Boston Tea Party on my liquor. I find your lack of faith disturbing. I can be good. I can have a drink without having twenty, I can – why’re you looking at me like that?”

“Nat told me about what you were like last time something majorly shitty happened to you. And you just broke up with your girlfriend, so.”

Tony elects to drop his head back onto the computer desk instead of replying. Which, in light of the ridiculous amount by which it worsens his already impressive headache, is a terrible life choice. But which, in light of the compounded effects of a mean hangover, a fresh breakup which marks the loss of his best friend and the failure of what may have been the only meaningful relationship he’d had going for him, and the knowledge that he’s again managed to royally fuck yet another thing up and hurt some of those closest to him all in one go, is really the only possible course of action.

“I’m going to have Jarvis make an itinerary of all the booze in the house," Barton says. "And then I’ll move it somewhere not here. And I won’t tell you where. Also, you’re going to give me all your credit cards and cash to hang on to. And I’m going to hunt you down and shoot you in the ass if you try and take them back while I’m sleeping.”

“Do I get a last request?”

“Of the alcoholic variety? Absolutely not.”

“No, of the fuck me, how can I make the anguish of sobriety less likely to translate into illegal or inelegantly reckless plans variety.”

“Depends.”

“Can you call Steve? And pretend it’s SHIELD-related, because there’s a 93% chance he’s not going to come otherwise?”


	4. Speak Slow (in which a lot of curry and a lot of explaining are in order)

“Bruce, come in.” Tony pairs his greeting with his trademark smile as Bruce cautiously steps into the kitchen. “The star-spangled man with a plan and I were just finalizing how we’re going to save New York. Again. Or, more accurately, un-fuck up all the damage we did that time we went a few rounds with the Chitauri. What brings you here?”

“I was going to make curry.” If he sounds hesitant, it’s only because his head is spinning. “Which you two are welcome to share.” Rogers is here. Rogers is in the same room as Tony. Tony’s just spoken and Rogers doesn’t look like he sorely wants to hit him. In fact, he’s smiling.

“You are a saint. Saint Bruce of Science and Reason and Curry. Jarvis, are you getting this?”

“I’m not sure what you mean to accomplish by asking me to make a note of it, sir, as you are not vested with the authority to hand out sainthood titles.”

“No, I mean the awesome healing powers of curry in action for future reference –and the recipe, if that’s all the same to you, Bruce--”

“Of course, sir.”

“I’ve never tried curry,” Rogers cuts in, “but I’d like to. Thank you.”

“You’ve never tried curry? What about sushi? I know you haven’t had Dip’n’Dots. Which is a tragedy that pales in comparison to all of the television and movies you have not yet seen. And the general awesomeness unique to this half of the last century that you’ve been too busy saving the world to appreciate. Tell you what, where’re you staying right now?”

“Brooklyn. I don’t need much space, so the little apartment I have is perfectly-- ”

“Now that is magnificently not conducive to realizing the coordinated efforts we’ve spent half the morning planning. Commuting from Brooklyn every single morning and evening to and from the tower, plus to wherever we’ll be working? Sounds exhausting. And, more importantly, it’d be a waste of daylight we could otherwise be using to help people. Now, here’s an idea – you could move in with us. Just while we’re working on implementing the plans – think of it as Hotel Stark. Only with better company than you’d find anywhere else in New York.”

 

_.x._

 

Fifteen minutes later, he, Tony, Rogers, Barton, and Thor are crowded around the kitchen table. Bruce doesn’t really expect to get a word in edgewise during this meal, so he sits back to enjoy the curry that turned out remarkably well considering his mind had been everywhere but his cooking.

“Where is the shieldmaiden Natasha?” Thor asks, a more serious expression replacing the puppy-dog excitement that spread across his face when he received his share of the curry. “Were it not for her absence, this gathering would put me in mind of the hearty meal we shared in celebration of our victory in the battle for New York.”

“Bruce, I think what our friendly neighborhood thunder god is getting at here is your cooking is officially on par with New York street food. Although I’d wager it’s better. And I’m not just saying that because I can’t say for sure if I’ve eaten in the past 24 hours. Actually Thor, that is a surprisingly legitimate question. Barton? You’re here, how come she isn’t too?”

He shrugs. “Some of us still have day jobs. What happened to your girl, Thor?”

“Low blow, Barton,” Tony interjects. “But more importantly, that was a seriously unimaginative attempt to change the subject. Please tell me it’s the current lack of SHIELD-authorized reasons to shoot things that’s the touchy subject here and that you didn’t piss Natasha off. Because right now, I absolutely do not need to deal with the collateral damage of her swift and terrible revenge.”

Barton looks to have a few choice remarks to add, but Thor speaks before he can. “He is my friend, and as such, he has a right to know. As do you all. In the throes of wrath at having been denied my rightful throne and wonder at the discovery of a new world, I was not seeing clearly when first I set foot upon Midgard. In such a state, I fear I may have misjudged the true depth of the bond Jane and I shared. My return found her in the arms of another. Yet I wish her no ill will, for it is a selfish man who asks fidelity of a lover of less than a fortnight, and one to whom he cannot pledge in return his constant presence at her side nor his safe return from battle.”

If anyone besides Bruce notices the way Tony’s face has gone carefully blank, they don’t say anything. And by the time Rogers and Barton have offered their condolences, he’s grinning again.

“Ok, everyone, cancel any plans you had for this evening. We’re taking Thor out on the town,” Tony declares. “See, there’s this ancient Midgardian tradition where a man’s friends take him out to drink and flirt with gorgeous strangers to raise his spirits after a breakup. Been around since before Cap’s time. Don’t look at me like that, Capsicle, this is a culturally educational field trip. Besides, you can chaperone. Or is this about the fact that you can’t get drunk? Because there’s way more to going out than drinking—Fuck. ” Bruce follows the direction of Tony’s gaze to see Clint drawing a finger across his throat. “New plan. Movie night with chocolate and bonbons, ‘cause that’s another Midgardian breakup tradition, plus Thor actually really likes movies. Cap’s choice, because we have a new house guest, and that’s a momentous occasion that deserves to be celebrated -- ”

“I never said I’d stay here--”

“But you will, right?”

Tony might not have puppy eyes down, but Thor sure does. Rogers never stood a chance. 

“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I would like to see everyone, and it would make working on our project go more smoothly--”

“I knew you’d come ‘round. And just to prove you’ve made the right choice, I’ll let you pick the takeout place, too. Just let me know what you’ve chosen before 6, or we’re getting sushi and I’m letting Clint pick the movie, even if it means watching Brave. ”

“Friend Steve,” Thor booms, cutting off what was sure to have been an indignant defense of the film in question from Clint. “My heart, too, is glad that you will not be taking your leave of us so soon. If you are not unduly weary from your strategizing, I would have you spar with me. Though I am grateful for the peace assured by our last battle, it has been long since I have had a worthy opponent.”

“Yeah, I’d – I’d like that. I’m finished, actually, if you want to…?” And yeah, Rogers is definitely blushing, though with him, it might just be from the praise.

“Indeed! Man of Iron, you will not have need of the gymnasium this afternoon?”

“Nah, knock yourselves out.”

Thor has his arm slung over Rogers’s shoulders as the two make their way out of the kitchen grinning like idiots. And then Thor turns over his shoulder to wink at the assembled company.

“Oh my god. The sly bastard!” Tony exclaims as soon as the two are out of earshot. “Did you guys see that? He planned that whole damn thing. Now Thor’s conspiring against us, next thing you know Natasha’ll be corrupting Pepper and it’ll just be me, Bruce, and Steve against the world.”

Clint chokes on a mouthful of curry and a violent coughing fit ensues. Tony thumps him on the back, perhaps a little harder than necessary.

“I think he was conspiring with you there, actually,” Bruce says gently. “He wants Rogers to stay here, too.”

“I don’t think that’s all he wants from Steve. Besides, Thor. Capable of guile. My world view is slowly imploding here. You have any mind-blowing secrets you need to share? Bruce? Clint?”

Taking a deep breath, Bruce turns to face Tony. “Actually, I think you might. Have some explaining to do, that is. As to why you suddenly can’t take Thor to a bar.”

“Ah. Well. Kind of a funny story.”

“And --” Clint begins, rising from the table, “That’s my cue to go make sure Thor hasn’t traumatized a national icon. Pretty doubtful that Asgardian and 1940’s courting rituals match up nicely.” 

Bruce spares a withering look for the hastily departing agent before turning back to stare expectantly at Tony.

“Ok, ok.” Tony holds his hands up in surrender. “So I might have given up drinking.”

Bruce just stares. A few seconds pass before it occurs to him that his face might be doing weird things while his head is busy failing to process what’s just been said. But by the time he gets around to schooling his features into a more appropriate expression, Tony’s talking again.

“Pepper and I broke up. Not a shocker, really – everyone’s going to be more surprised it lasted this long – but it still sucks. So normally, I’d be spending the next few weeks drowning in some particularly fine scotch, but apparently doing so to the neglect of one’s houseguests is considered bad form. And I’m really an all or nothing guy. Which means no alcohol for me in the forseeable future.  
“Plus, Steve and I are going to rebuild the bits of the city we wrecked. And I’m thinking the heavy lifting is probably something I should be sober for.  
“Also, there’s a good chance I owe you an apology. For nearly making you hulk out and all. So. Not really my forte, apologies. But I can tell you that you won’t find me drunk again, passed out or otherwise, as long as you’re here.  
“Oh, and there’s a chance I invented time travel last night. On the one hand, my BAC wasn’t exactly near the legal driving limit when this revelation took place. On the other hand, this is me. You want to go check my notes and see? If you’re not still mad at me, that is. In which case, I get it, the whole self-absorbed asshole thing I have going on can be a bit—”

“I – no,” Bruce hasn’t fully formulated what he wants to say, never mind fully processed all that Tony’s just thrown at him, but he just can’t leave the man hanging. Not with the uncharacteristic uncertainty creeping into his voice like that. Adorable as it is. “I’m not angry. But – let me see if I’ve got this straight – you quit drinking… because of me?”

“I just told you I may have harnessed the power to travel through time and space – ok, one of those already existed, but seriously, we could go see dinosaurs and bring a one back for Thor, and how cool would that be – and that’s what you’re taking away from this?”

“You want to bring Thor a dinosaur. This is probably where I should tell you to go sit quietly in the corner and think very carefully about that plan of action and why it might be a bad idea. And I would, only you didn’t answer my question.”

“Right. Well. It doesn’t take, well, someone of my intellectual caliber to figure out that my excessive drinking majorly freaked you out this morning. Which is generally the sort of interpersonal mojo I try to avoid between me and people I actually like. We’re science bros. And bros don’t let their character flaws and negligence make their bros turn into big green rage monsters. Or let them continue to go about their lives as if nothing’s wrong when they’re a genius scientist who hasn’t seen Dr. Who, which, by the way you latched onto the dinosaur and not the reference bit of my earlier comment, I’m going to take a stab in the dark here and say has been your sorry fate. Which needs to change, but right now, there are more important things at stake. Like the part where there might be real time travel waiting a few floors down. So…”

“I’d love to go ensure that we won’t be bringing any dinosaurs home for dinner.” If his mouth is running on autopilot because he’s still trying to wrap his head around the fact that a man he’s known for all of a week has made a major, life-altering decision just to be nice to him, well, Tony doesn’t need to know that.


	5. Closer (in which there is science and pizza and quite possibly some real team bonding)

After half an hour, it’s apparent that Tony has not, in fact, invented time travel. Which is a tragedy that calls for more coffee. When he tells Bruce as much, however, the man takes on a pained expression. “You know, you’re not really supposed to use that stuff the way you do alcohol. Or for the same purpose.” 

“Who says I’m doing that? I’m not doing that. I’m having coffee because, unlike alcohol, it enables me to do work that will still hold up the next day and not promise me the world, and then, just when I’m acclimating to the idea that I might deserve it, snatch the floor out from under me. Very different entities. And I appreciate that difference. And why’re you looking at me like that? Cease and desist immediately.”

“Tony. Are you ok?”

He takes a deep breath. He knows, somewhere in a small, rarely-used part of his mind that’s responsible for decision-making and moderating social behavior – ok, that’d be the prefrontal cortex, so maybe not that small a region, but size isn’t everything where neuroanatomy is concerned – that the question is coming from somewhere genuine. That it isn’t born of pity or a universally applied biological impulse to help people. That this is Bruce, not Pepper. That it’s different. Somehow that only makes it worse, makes him feel guiltier for brushing the man off because Tony Stark does not do feelings. 

“Yeah, I am. Six days without anyone trying to kill me and Thor hasn’t even broken any of my big screens today. I’m on a roll.” He flashes Bruce a huge press-conference-ready grin. “Actually, I think that Thor-proof glass would probably still be a good thing to have around. Just in case. Sadly, not really something I can pop into Home Depot for, because let’s face it, this world still isn’t ready for Thor. You know what, that’s what I’m doing this afternoon. Making a Thor-proof alloy. Totally going to come in handy if he gets emotional about what we’re watching tonight or decides to challenge Clint to a wii duel again. Plus, I mean, if it’s Thor-proof, it’s going to be able to withstand just about anything – or it will after a little tweaking and testing with things like bullets. Might be useful for making New York’s finests’ some better bullet-proof vests – or making you some pants that’ll be able to adjust to fit the other guy, because I’d be cool strutting around naked, but you don’t strike me as the type of guy who’d have an exhibitionist kink. You can help, if you want. Background in physics, would totally save me a few hours of background reading. Or decrease my chance of explosions by 40%, depending on whether I’m feeling patient enough for that reading to actually happen.  
“And that’s a proper offer, by the way. So if you’re thinking of accepting because you think you owe me, don’t. There’s like a 98% chance that you’re one of the few people who’s got an even sharper mind than I do, but I’m going to spell this out for you anyway, ‘cause it’s important. Quitting drinking was my choice. Totally voluntary. Because I like you and I want you to stay here. Not because I’m expecting anything from you in return. So my mental health? Not something you should feel responsible for. Or be concerned about. Because I’m fine. More than fine, because I’m about to invent the Thor-proof TV, and that is some exciting shit right there.” 

Bruce is looking a little taken aback, and Tony can’t really blame him. Because maybe it’s a side effect of the hangover and maybe it’s just his typical poor judgment, but he could’ve sworn he mentioned feelings in there. 

But then Bruce grins and says, “Why not?” And that means they can revert to the much safer topic of science and that Tony can pretend that the rest of the conversation never happened.

 

_.x._

 

By 7pm, Tony’s mood has improved exponentially. He has what he’s fairly certain is a sheet of Thor-proof glass cut to size and screwed onto his big screen and a slice of what’s definitely the best pepperoni pizza he’s ever had in his hand. Honestly, he’s not sure which of these is a bigger deal. Which, considering how the importance of the pizza is all wrapped up in caring about other people, is a terrifying realization, and one he files away in the serious things to consider later, or you know, never, compartment of his brain.

Steve had said he wanted pizza, because he had fond memories of going to some pizza joint in Brooklyn with friends. Clint, by dint of being not-Steve and also not-Thor, was in charge of making dinner actually happen. Apparently Clint doesn’t do things by halves, either. Because he didn’t just find a pizza place in Brooklyn, he hunted down the pizza parlor Steve went to back in the ‘40’s, and now Steve has a goofy grin on his face, and Tony could kiss Barton, except he’s trying this new thing where he doesn’t actively try to bang any of his friends.  
All in all, he doesn’t even mind when he sees Steve trying to cue up The Fellowship of the Ring. 

“Barton put you up to this, didn’t he?” he says, dropping down beside Rogers to hand him the correct one of the seven remote controls.

“Nay,” Thor replies, “It was upon my suggestion that the good captain chose this moving picture. For I was led to believe that it recounts the tale of a group of mighty warriors brought together that they might overcome their differences to save an imperiled world, which rather put me in mind of our story, when first we met.”

“So you put Thor up to it, knowing he’d suggest it to Steve? What did I tell you about using your super secret spy skills to manipulate movie night choices, Katniss?” Tony admonishes, flopping onto a couch next to Bruce. “Besides, I thought for sure you’d pick Brave out of spite after our conversation at lunch. Or Hunger Games, since it combines your twin loves of shooting things with a bow and arrow and hiding in trees. Well, whatever – you’re playing therapist if these two,” he gestures at Thor and Steve, “overrelate to Sam and Frodo. Which they’re going to.”

Clint looks unrepentant, but mostly ridiculous, because he’s perched on top of an armchair. “Brave and Hunger Games were never an option with this crowd.”

Which, ok, touché. No way Thor was going to be able to handle the whole “mend the bond torn by pride” plotline in the first or the Reaping scene in the latter.

 

_.x._

 

By 9pm, it’s become apparent that they’re watching the extended version of the film. Which is an accomplishment on Clint’s part, because he doesn’t even own the extended cut. Didn’t. Until he gave Clint his credit cards that morning. 

But Thor and Steve are still totally rapt, and Clint’s even masquerading as a normal human being and actually sitting in his armchair, and Bruce’s posture says he’s actually letting himself relax and enjoy this. 

Besides, as soon as Sting’s powers had become apparent, Thor declared that he wanted a noble blade whose beauty was matched only by its utility, in that its silver might bleed into majestic cerulean when foes drew near. And Tony’s never been one to back down from a challenge. He’s got a tablet in hand and, having already co-created plans for pinning down the genetic signatures of all SHIELD’s known villains, is conferring with Bruce about how to make metal turn blue without using any compounds that might react poorly to high doses of electricity. And if he’s honest, he’s pretty damn happy right now.

 

_.x._

 

By 10 pm, Tony’s abandoned the tablet in order to better become one with the couch, because suddenly at least a week and a half of caring fuckall for how much he slept is catching up with him. Bruce and Steve look like they’ve reached a similar stage, only Steve’s leaning just as heavily on Thor as on the couch. Thor looks pretty damn pleased with this development. Clint looks rather self-satisfied, as well, but he picked the damn film, so he better.

Tony’s calculating the trajectory he needs for a direct hit to Steve with a piece of popcorn to see just how far gone he is – for science, of course, just to test the degree to which super soldier reflexes hold up in the face of exhaustion and pheromones – when suddenly he has a lapful of Bruce. Who is apparently further gone than he suspected, because he’s fast asleep.

Bruce’s glasses are all askew and his features are all relaxed and it’s pretty fucking adorable. Until it hits Tony that this is Bruce. Bruce, who’s one of the few people who may have trust issues as big as his own. Who’s been shy and self-conscious and kept his distance because he doesn’t feel like he has anything to offer, but also probably because he’s afraid that otherwise he’ll Hulk out and snap somebody’s neck. Who’s known Tony for less than a week, but at the same time, long enough to see that he’s not responsible or reliable. 

He’s happy, really he is, that Bruce is getting more comfortable around people and feels like he can let his guard down like this. But this – Bruce sleeping like a baby in his lap – this looks a lot like Bruce trusting him. Tony didn’t ask for that, didn’t want it. And damned if he knows what to do with it. Because every last person who’s trusted him has wound up hurt, because when people get too close to him, they see how selfish and faithless and broken he is and they leave, or he pushes them away on purpose when that doesn’t get the job done. Because he doesn’t want to lose Bruce just as he realized he had him, but he doesn’t see this ending any other way. 

And maybe he’s been frozen mid popcorn pitch for a little too long, because Clint’s making judgmental eyebrows at him. He lobs the popcorn at him instead. Clint not only catches it, but favors him with a knowing smile. Bastard.


	6. Drove Me Wild (in which a gentleman caller pays a visit and a scientific investigation is undertaken)

Chapter 6

At half past seven, Bruce is making his way to the kitchen with a mission. Namely, coffee. His work for the day – scientific and otherwise – is cut out for him and just thinking about it makes him want to crawl back into his ridiculously large and probably equally expensive bed. But it’s all going to be slightly less shitty after he has coffee.

He comes into the kitchen to find a man standing between him and the coffee in question. That is, there’s a man he’s never seen before leaning against the counter next to the espresso machine nursing a mug with an oxytocin molecule on it. The offending mug is Tony’s, so he’s pretty sure the neurotransmitter is intended to be very nerdy sex joke. The man has a mess of wavy black hair, a lithe frame, and impeccable bone structure. And a trick of looking like he’s judging you without saying a word. He looks for all the world like he belongs there in Tony’s kitchen, all crisp, no doubt bespoke suit and smooth confidence to match the million-dollar furnishings and unabashed boldness that marks pretty well every room of the tower. 

It’s a rather auspicious start, Bruce thinks. Especially since this means having to interact with people before he’s had his caffeine. Which brings him to the fact that he’s probably being rude, staring and not proffering any sort of greeting, and sends him scrabbling for something to say. 

He’s coming up blank and it’s about to be eleven kinds of awkward and generally awful, but then suddenly Clint’s there too, and he doesn’t have to deal with the situation alone anymore. Although, also, Clint is there now, and where the hell did he come from, because Bruce absolutely did not hear him come in, and master assassin or not, sneaking up on Bruce is a terrible, terrible idea.

“You Tony’s?” says Clint, never one to put stock in preamble.

“I’m here by invitation, if that’s what you’re getting at.” So he’s British then, and, from the sounds of it, from somewhere posh.

“Right.” Clint sidesteps him and devotes his full attention to emptying a quantity of espresso large enough to warrant an FDA warning into a thermos. The man looks a little put out.

“Hi, I don’t think we’ve met?” And now Rogers is in the doorway and Bruce is pretty sure it’s biologically impossible for someone to be that chipper this early, but then he guesses Rogers’ biology hasn’t been left entirely up to nature. 

“Steve Rogers, I presume? A pleasure, I’m sure,” the man says, shaking the extended hand.

“And you are?”

“Charles Livingston, and I shan’t be darkening your doorway much longer.”

“Your cab, sir,” JARVIS intones, on cue. “If you’re quite finished.”

And with that, the mystery man disappears into the foyer. Bruce is 98% sure Clint is checking out his ass as he leaves.  
Steve looks like a lost puppy. “Who was that?”

“Tony’s bootyca— an attractive stranger Tony bedded but probably doesn’t plan to see again.” Clint supplies, taking a long pull from his thermos.

Steve turns crimson, opens his mouth, shuts it, and opens it again, but no sound comes out. He ends up settling for pursing his lips. 

“Whose real name is probably not ‘Dr. Livingston, I presume.” Bruce says. He means to leave it at that, make his excuses, grab his coffee, and get the hell out. But he glances over at Steve, who’s still looking kind of broken and Clint, with these huge dark circles under his eyes and somehow what comes out is, “Who wants pancakes?”

 

._x_.

 

“This doughy concoction does indeed bear a striking resemblance to Mjolnir!” Thor says, admiring Bruce’s latest batch of pancakes, which are hammer-shaped. Bruce tenses, bracing himself for a clap him on the shoulder hard enough to fell a lesser man, because he seen Thor joking around with Rogers and that’s how the man shows affection. But Thor only beams at him, open and sincere.

And he’s underestimated Thor again. The way he talks – a little like Shakespeare at Woodstock – belies the fact that the man’s a lot more perceptive than most people give him credit for. Bruce remembers the footage of Thor trying to get through to Bruce when he’d hulked out on the helicarrier. He may still be learning contemporary Midgardian syntax, but Thor’s the only one who saw the Other Guy for what he was – not some alien presence in Bruce’s body, but all his raw impulses and emotions, given the keys to the kingdom. And now here he goes again, getting that Bruce is open to compliments and maybe even camaraderie, but has a whole writhing snakepit of issues with physical contact without Bruce saying a damn word.

“The hammer is my penis.” Tony deadpans, materializing in the doorway.

Clint grins. “You’ve been holding that in since you met him, haven’t you?”

“Which is an admirable show of restraint on my part. Oh Captain, my captain, glad you’re up, do you think you can be ready for some hands-on philanthropy in twenty– are those chocolate chip pancakes?” He clasps Barton’s hands, gazing at him earnestly. “Clint, can we keep him? He sciences, he cooks, he leaps between tall buildings in a single bound – like an intellectual, domestic Superman. In other words, the perfect man.” And then, turning towards Bruce, “Are there any left?” 

“Not so fast, Don Juan,” Clint says, spreading his arms to block access to the remaining pancakes. “You leaving an unattended Englishman in our kitchen meant Bruce I had to explain 21st century Midgardian dating to these two. We ought to suspend your pancake clearances as penance.”

“Oh my god. You gave Captain America the birds and the bees talk without me? That’s punishment enough. Besides, what’s the worst he did – drink coffee at you?”

“Nay, though I did not have the honor of meeting your lover, I am untroubled by his visit and found the subsequent discussion most informative,” says Thor. “Although it saddens me to hear of the backwards attitudes adopted by many Midgardians in relation to the propriety of coupling and one’s proclivities for lovers the lovers they take.”

“Wait, as in those aren’t a thing in Asgard?” asks Tony.

“Among the Aesir, sexual conquests are celebrated in song and prose, as are the deeds of mighty warriors – for men and women alike, as are their victories in battle. And whom one chooses to take as a lover is of little consequence, if they are in agreement, and are happy.”

“Wow. Asgard, one, Midgard zero. Midgard during Capsicle’s time, negative 70. No, don’t give me that look – the ‘40’s had a lot going for them – a strong economy, pencil skirts, gorgeous sports cars – but equality wasn’t one of them. You have a lot of catching up to do. Which can be a thing. A thing we can set rolling by --”

“No.” says Clint.

“You didn’t even know what I was going to say—”

“We’re not taking Steve to a gay bar. Because that would mean going to a bar. Remember that thing where you’re not drinking?”

“You got a better idea?”

“Yeah. We’re having another movie night.”

“And watching something not four hours long this time? Because if that was too much for Gandi over here to stay awake for, it’s hardly fair for you to expect us to.”

“Speaking of which,” says Bruce, “does anyone want to explain how I made it to bed last night?”

“That’d be Tony. He carried you. Thor offered, but he muttered something about the Science Bro Code and stalked off with you, so.”

“What can I say? You fell asleep on top of me; I felt morally obligated.”

Somehow, during the course of the conversation, the remaining pancakes had made their way from the counter behind Clint to Tony’s plate, but no one seemed to mind.

_.x._

By 10am, the pancakes were long gone, and so were Tony and Steve. Bruce had been cordially invited to watch The Emperor’s New Groove with Thor and Barton, but he’d braved Thor’s puppy dog eyes and declined. 

He’d slunk off to his lab, hoping to bury his head in some research. Unfortunately, his current projects left something to be desired in terms of their usefulness as distractions. Namely, once he’d started his simulations and set his solutions, there was nothing to do but sit around and wait for the results. 

A little like his stay at Hotel Stark.

Which brought him back to the real work for today, the reason he’d had to drag himself out of bed and the task he’d been successfully procrastinating for about three hours now: figuring out what in god’s name he was doing.

On Monday, he’d helped fight a bunch of aliens and a demigod. After the Battle of New York, as Thor had christened it, he’d been exhausted enough to pass out in a bed in a spare room at Stark Tower without much in the way of protests. And somewhere between Tony showing him around R & D and Tony carrying him to bed after a movie night, the spare room had become his room. Rationalizing that he would stay at the tower until he caught his breath and planned out his next move had turned into a week passing without him noticing and without the preparation of any travel plans. 

Suddenly, the null hypothesis that staying any longer would fuck all the things up, which he would have accepted as an inevitable outcome when he'd arrived, became a bona fide research question. The larger issue was whether he could operationalize warning signs of an impending, Bruce-made clusterfuck in such a way that he would know when he needed to get out, if the null hypothesis held true, before anyone got hurt. Answering this question demanded a more thorough analysis of risk factors, and frankly, most of the variables he'd been worried about initally -- potential clashes with housemates -- proved to be nonissues. There was just the small matter of the enormous crush he had on his host, a problem which had manifested itself most recently in the jealousy, bordering on animosity he was presently harboring for the nameless Englishman who'd graced their kitchen that morning and terrible things Tony's words -- intended as harmless, if flirtatious, banter had done to him.


	7. Now I'm All Messed Up (in which there are attractive Brits, a few attractive Americans, and a surfacing of what bears a striking resemblance feelings)

“‘Imagine Me & You’? Barton, this sounds like the worst sort of chick flick.” There’s no bite to his words. He has—possibly for the first time in his life – spent the whole day doing intense manual labor, and he’s bone-tired. At this point, he’d probably watch Twilight without more than a few perfunctory protests. Only he has a reputation to uphold. “If they can’t even get the grammar straight in a four-word title, I’d hate to see what injustices the dialogue’s had to suffer. And I paid my dues, I watched all of the archery with you last night, but I’ve got to draw the line – ”

“It’s a lesbian love story,” Clint replies. “So culturally educational for our national icon here. And it’s full of attractive British actors and don’t even try to tell me that isn’t a selling point for you because if you say what’s his face’s accent isn’t half the reason you took him home, you’re lying.”

 

_.x._

 

The film isn’t actually half bad. The plot revolves around Piper Piebo’s character, adorable, straight-cut, and naïve, but still tenacious and strong-willed – basically what he imagines Steve would be like as a British woman born in this century – working out that she’s into women, with some help from a drop-dead gorgeous Lena Headey. And, as Clint promised, the rest of the cast was pretty damn attractive and incredibly British. Besides, watching Steve splutter and turn an imaginative range of pinks and reds as the film progressed was priceless. He decides letting Clint pick movies might not be such a bad idea after all.

It’s when the film ends and he’s left sitting alone on the couch in the dark, or as dark as it ever gets when you have an arc reactor embedded in your chest, that everything goes to shit. When he feels raw and bruised and generally awful in a way he can’t chalk up to not sleeping or eating like a normal human being. 

But that’s nothing new. The real problem is the sinking feeling that this time, his usual methods aren’t going to get him through the night.

A few months ago, he’d have gone down to his lab to work – run some more tests on his new Thor alloy, made some upgrades to his suit – and before he knew it, he’d have been waking up on the lab floor, or, if he was lucky, on the couch in the corner, the next morning. 

But now it’s November, and lab work’s not going to do the trick. Because he and Pepper happened, and he got used to having someone around that he could rely on. And someone he could trust, even, for the first time since the only other person who’d fit that bill had ripped the arc reactor out of his chest and left him to die on his own damn sofa. Then Pepper left. And now the space he would’ve called freedom a few short months ago feels like a gaping hole in his chest. 

Bouncing theories and equations back and forth with Bruce, coordinating superhuman-strength-required construction work with Cap, bantering with them, Clint, and Thor over a meal or a movie when they’re physically there to ground him – those are all acceptable distractions. 

But work isn’t. And he’s pointedly ignoring the theory positing that this new development has anything to do with not wanting to be alone. Kind of like he’s ignoring the terrifying prospect that he just might have fucked things up so badly this time that he might not be able to fix them by himself, with his own two hands.

A day ago, he’d have crawled into a bottle, or several, and made it to the next morning with a little less grace than lab work offered, but just as much speed.

But now it’s 24 hours later and he’s made a promise to a man who for some inscrutable reason has decided to trust him, and he’ll be damned if he’s going back on it.

Two vices down. Which still leaves playboy wide open. And right now, finding a warm, willing body, something solid and tangible to hold onto, and a quick, chemically guaranteed cure for insomnia – or what some people might call an orgasm, or a few –is sounding pretty damn appealing. 

That sort of reasoning had paid off last night. Not five minutes after he’d made it to the bar, he’d been sought out by a tall drink of water asking after the underlying programming for the translating app on the Starkphone. 

Ok, so, to the untutored eye, the leap from this man is trying to steal my tech to god, I want to take him home might not seem like an entirely logical progression of thought. But the man, Charles as he’d introduced himself with a pause long enough to suggest that probably wasn’t his real name, was, well. Intelligent and articulate and witty, for starters. And gorgeous, all impeccably cut Italian suit over lean muscle on a wiry frame with this breezy arrogance and a way of making every word he said seem like a challenge that left Tony wanting nothing more than to wipe the impudent smirk off his face. Preferably by fucking him into a mattress. Or just about any other available, stable surface – he hadn’t felt the need to be picky. And he would’ve been lying if he said the man’s British accent hadn’t been a contributing factor.

In the end, he’d let probably-not-Charles have a go at his phone, because you’d have to be pretty damn creative to incorporate that tech into something resembling a weapon, and furthermore, you’d need an intellect on par with his own to work the codes out from just a few minutes with the phone. Besides, if things went south with regard to copyright laws, that’d be a mess that landed on Pepper’s desk, not his. And he was feeling just petty and angry enough to take satisfaction in that.

The man had worked out the codes, and he’d decided right then that he would have him, or no one that evening. Turns out not-Charles had exceeded Tony’s expectations in bed, as well.

There’s just one little problem with putting the same plan into action tonight. Namely, he’s got a mess of nasty thoughts brewing, ones which may or may not have anything to do with the plotline from the film involving the jilted boyfriend and a scene in which he’s standing near the edge of a rooftop terrace and letting the enormity of his life being in tatters wash over him. Or something. Point is, these thoughts are disturbingly close to coagulating into feelings. And if he’s around alcohol for any length of time, he’s not going to be able to stop himself from using drink to head this progression off. He may not have his credit cards anymore, but he is absolutely not above turning on the charm to get strangers to buy him drinks. Which would most certainly constitute a violation of condition number two. 

He’d been so far gone after two weeks with Pepper that he’d actually deleted the contact information for men and women who previous experience suggested would probably be up for a bootycall from his Starkphone. So that was a non-option.

He’s left with no other recourse than to flop across the couch in a way that might be categorized as slightly melodramatic if he had an audience. What use was being a certified genius if you were rendered useless by a single measly breakup?

“Um.”

And shit, that’s Bruce. Who had gone down to his lab, but apparently not stayed there. Sharp mind and a scientist’s eye - no doubt he’s already taken in the whole Tony, lying facedown on the couch, the TV still stuck on the last frame of the movie’s credits. 

Tony doesn’t get up, because that would just be grossly obvious overcompensating. Also, a lot of effort. He does roll over so he can smile at Bruce, because if he did that at the birthday party where he thought he was dying, he'll be damned if he can't do it for Bruce.

“Did you know, Netflix has an appallingly small collection of films featuring Lena Heady. Conversely, Game of Thrones, in which she plays a prominent role, has an obnoxiously large number of episodes at present – so many, in fact, that if I started watching now, I would not be able to watch them all and get more than three hours of sleep to appease Cap before heading off to lift heavy things tomorrow morning. Deciding upon an acceptable piece of cinematography to watch as a consolation for these tragic circumstances bears some pondering. 

But – and I can’t believe the words coming out of my mouth - enough about me. Anything I can do for you? Scientific queries to be answered? Bridal-style lifting and carrying of your person to your bedroom I can do a repeat performance of? Sexual favors you’d like to collect on in return for your cooking, which, by the way, I’m with Thor on –is exquisite?”

He thinks he can see Bruce actually blush – which is… interesting, because Bruce hasn’t batted an eyelash at some of his bawdier comments. But maybe it’s just a trick of the light, seeing as the TV and his arc reactor aside, the living room’s pretty dark. More importantly, it means he’s off the hook for tough questions. Except shit, now Bruce is favoring him with what is eminently recognizable as a methinks the lady doth protest too much look. Tony smiles wider and braces himself for the worst. “Actually,” Bruce says, “there is something you can help me with. Apparently, I’ve got a gaping hole in my British sci-fi education. Any chance you have a way to watch--”

“Yes.” And if he answered faster than the speed of light and before he’s 100% sure what Bruce was asking – certified genius, so his money’s on the question being about Dr. Who and not say, Children of the Stones, but technically that’s still up for grabs – well, it’s because he was a little unprepared for just how much of a fucking godsend Bruce is. “I’m glad to hear that you’ve finally seen the light, and it just so happens that almost the entirety of the series’ existing episodes are on Netflix. Not that you can start just anywhere – it would be sacrilege to skip the 9th doctor, for example.”

 

_.x._

 

“I swear to god, you’re going to kill me if you keep doing that thing with your face.” They’ve just finished watching The Empty Child, and Bruce is doing that thing where his face sort of crumples and he looks really concerned, something he’d previously believed only Steve as capable of doing of such great effect. Presumably, said face is happening because it’s a two-part episode and there are kids involved and it’s not apparent that everyone’s going to make it. “Knock it off. Firstly, fictional characters. Besides, this is a story arc that actually has a happy ending! And believe me, Dr. Who and all, that’s a big fucking deal. Although, if you ask me, there’s still a tragedy to be had here. Ninety minutes of screen time and no one bangs Jack Harkness – now, if I’d been in Rose’s position, things would've gone a little differently. No, stop it. I don't deserve that judgmental look at all. Unless you can look me in the eyes and tell me you didn’t think about it, you’re going to have to rescind it.” 

Bruce laughs and ducks his head, touches the back of his neck. “Ok, fine, I thought about it.” And huh, that’s interesting, because that had been somewhere between a rhetorical question and an open invitation to make some joke about Tony thinking with his dick, but mostly because he’d kind of assumed Bruce was interested exclusively in the fairer sex. “But I’d say saving London from aliens takes precedence over getting laid.”

“So you would’ve banged him after that got sorted out?” It’s a good job he’s perfected the art of letting his mouth go on autopilot, especially when the subject is sex, because Tony’s not paying the slightest attention to what he’s saying. He’s re-evaluating all the interactions he and Bruce have had in light of this new piece of information, because that shit is important. And he’s formulating a theory. A theory that would certainly explain why Bruce was blushing earlier when he asked him about sexual favors. A theory positing that Bruce might like him in a more-than-science-bros sort of way. Just a theory, not a certainty, not til he has conducted loads more testing and gathered much more information. But still. Shit.

Usually, when someone’s into him, it’s a heady feeling. A surge of pride and pleasure that goes straight to his head, and honestly, usually straight to his cock, as well. But now – fuck. There’s a good chance he could lean over and kiss Bruce, right now, and he’d respond in kind. And he wants to. God, at this precise moment, he wants absolutely nothing more than that. But he shouldn’t.

Because Bruce is turning out to be the closest thing to a friend he’s had since Pepper and Rhodey. Who don’t count. Pepper, because they dated, and now, well. And Rhodey because he’s honest and loyal and hilarious and a better friend than Tony deserves, but he’s never around, because he’s off halfway around the world laying his on the line every day to protect his fellow Americans. Or something. Point is, he likes to think he’s got a pretty remarkable command of the English language on the rare occasions when he decides to be serious, and words still aren’t going to do any justice to how awesome Bruce is and how stupidly good to him – to them all – he’s been with precious little reason to be. Moreover, he’s really all Tony’s got right now. 

There’s a good chance Bruce wants Tony. And God, Tony he wants him, too. But an hour ago, he also wanted to go find New York City’s answer to Lena Heady because of a film he just saw. Because what he really wants is a warm, pliant body. A distraction. 

Well, fuck. Tony Stark may be able to learn the ins and outs of astrophysics in an evening, but willpower – especially to resist temptation in all its forms – is a skill he’s had a lifetime to master and still hasn’t come close. But he can’t fuck this up by caving now. He just can’t. 

He grins at Bruce and clicks on the next episode. It’s going to be a long 45 minutes.


	8. Love They Say (In which a great deal of breakfast foods are prepared, a new Midgardian breakup tradition is christened, and a null hypothesis is confirmed)

When Bruce walks into the kitchen at 8am Friday morning, Clint’s sitting on the counter next to the Kuerig 2.0 coffeemaker and a mini Eiffel tower constructed entirely out of used k-cups. He raises his mug at him by way of greeting.

“Are you here looking for cooking lessons, too, Barton?” Bruce asks. 

Clint favors him with a one-fingered salute. 

“Well, then you better get off that counter. Unless you want to be covered in bananas and chocolate. And flour. A lot of flour.”

There’s a 96% chance Clint never made it to bed last night – a story told by the k-cups and corroborated by the vampirish dark circles under his eyes – but that’s neither here nor there. And neither one of them is going to bring it up. The same way neither one of them is going to mention the fact that Bruce and Tony have been spending so much time together that Bruce’s syntax has become irretrievably corrupted and the occasional innuendo falls out of his mouth before he can think what he’s saying. And Tony has started actually letting people finish their sentences. Sometimes.

“Nah, Tony’s your man if you’re looking for a foodplay scene. Not really my thing. Detracts from my rugged good looks.”

Naturally, Steve chooses that moment to arrive. To his credit, Bruce is pretty sure his recovery time for blushing is improving after about two weeks of living with this crowd.  
“Is the offer you mentioned still good?” he asks.

“Of course. This morning is dedicated to teaching you everything you ever wanted to know about making breakfast foods and then some. Or rather, it will be, as soon as I get this freeloader off the counter.”

Bruce would be up, and probably cooking, anyway and besides, he’s a doctor. No, bear with him. For him, that’s meant having to rely equally on what people said their symptoms were and what they didn’t, or couldn’t, tell him because he’d learned where he was that morning and as much of the language as he could that afternoon. And it means he notices things. Like the way Cap’s face kind of crumples every time someone has to explain how to work Tony’s TV or what global warming is. Like the way he was, from all reports, all cocksure composure during the Battle of New York and when he’s been out working with Tony, but is all blushing and quiet when he steps into peacetime, unstructured situations. Having a mission to focus on and learning a concrete set of skills that are applicable to this century might be good for him, even if it is just how to make breakfast. Besides, muffins are delicious.

“Hey, how come no one invited me to the Top Chef party?”

“Clint, I did invite you. Besides, this isn’t for him, it’s for Thor.”

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?”

And now Steve’s blushing again, but his voice is sure when he answers. “After I had a rough week at school – which was most weeks – my aunt would make my favorites on the weekend. More macaroni and apple pie than I knew what do with, at least until I started growing and they started rationing food. I thought it might be nice for Thor to have some comfort food after visiting his broth— well, to come home to.”

Clint has a lopsided grin on his face as he finally slides off the counter.

 

_.x._

 

Thor looks like hell when he gets back, but he’s still duly appreciative. He sees Steve, and his eyes flick from the smudge of flour on his cheek to the huge All-American spread on the table and a huge grin breaks across his face. And then he proceeds to kiss Steve full on the mouth.

Bruce knows he should look away, but he can’t.

Because this, right here in front of his nose, is everything he wants. And maybe it’s been a while since he’s had enough downtime and sleep to appreciate just how much he wants it, because he’s had bigger concerns like playing Where in the World Is Bruce Banner after the Other Guy skipped town without so much as a by-your-leave. Maybe this is the first time in a long time he’s been in one place long enough to get attached enough to anyone to have someone with whom he wanted this. Maybe the pancakes weren’t just for Steve and Thor. Maybe they were a little bit for Tony. In any case, the scene is a fresh reminder of how he’ll never get to have this again. And maybe that hurts like hell. 

Clint wolf-whistles. Bruce makes to put away the pan he’d been holding and finds finger-shaped indentations along the metal edge. It clatters to the counter. He takes a deep breath, puts on a big smile, and carries a stack of clean plates into the dining room to sit down to breakfast.

 

_.x._

 

By the time Tony gets back, the meal is long gone and Bruce and Clint have even managed to wash most of the dishes.

“You look like shit.” Clint greets him. “So which is it? Were you too busy getting laid last night to sleep, or has some serious shit gone down and you want me out of your kitchen, stat?”

“Both. Now kindly get out of my kitchen.”

“Tony?” Bruce asks.

“No, not you. You can – please stay. Christ, no, don’t look at me like that. I’m fine. Well, I could use a cheeseburger. You wanna make a burger run?”

There are a number of things Bruce wants to do right now. Taking a swing at whoever is responsible for the look on Tony’s face when he said please is pretty high on the list. Kissing it better is a close second. Eating anything ever again after that breakfast spread is conspicuously absent.

“Sure.”

 

._x_.

 

“There is absolutely nothing about my present love life that merits discussion,” Bruce says as Happy pulls away and they make their way towards the Shake Shack.  
“Ok, first of all, have you seen your ass? Because the fact that someone with an ass like yours allegedly has no love life to speak of is an idiosyncrasy of the universe that totally merits discussion. But you know, before you brought that up with like, negative preamble – which I thought was Clint’s thing, although maybe it’s your thing, too, and you just have layers, and I can respect that – I was planning on asking about how your research was coming along.”

“Oh. I thought, since the car ride here revolved around Happy’s new girlfriend—”

“Nah, I see you, like, all the time, so I feel like you’d tell me if there was an important development in that area. Happy, though, I haven’t gotten to catch up with in a while, and sexual exploits are common ground for us. Good man, believe it or not, I used to be even more of a cad than I am now, and he stuck with through that – but I toss in some of my more science-y exploits, and his eyes start to glaze over. Besides, I like to think of myself as a bit a Greek god in that respect. Like, in the spirit of What Not to Wear, the whole mythology is kind of this what not to do if you don’t want to be smote by the hand of god thing. Like look, Zeus cheated on Hera with Io, Hera got pissed and turned Io into a cow and then sent a fucking gadfly after her that chased her all the way to Egypt. The moral being, I think, that if you’re unfaithful, shit will go down, so don’t do that. Or something. So my relationship history is a comparable guide, and I feel morally obligated to impart that wisdom to others. Speaking of which, the bacon cheeseburgers here are superb.”

Tony inhales his first double cheeseburger. He picks unwraps the second, picks it up, makes to bite into it, and then stops. “Did you know Pepper was sleeping with Natasha? Because I had no idea Pepper was sleeping with Natasha. Until this morning.”

“So I’m trying this new being a functional adult thing, and I’m feeling pretty good because I just had the most amazing sex the night before – the lady was a stunt double, and we managed some things even I’ve never done before – so I think I’ll finally call up Pepper. Reconciliation, actually talking to one another, I hear it’s a good idea when the person in question effectively runs you company. I may not have remembered she wasn’t in the same time zone. Which may have meant I kind of woke her up at five in the morning. Now, Pepper yelling at me about that, not fun, but believe me, I’ve had worse, and honestly, I would’ve deserved it. Bump in the road, she hangs up on me, I call back, we smooth things over. But Pepper doesn’t pick up. Natasha fucking Romanov answers Pepper’s cell phone at five in the morning. Now, I’m not really sure if she started drifting into Russian after the fifth or the sixth and very creative, mind you, way she threatened to kill me, but that’s not really the takeaway here. 

“Because I’m pretty sure that Natasha fucking Romanov is banging Pepper Virginia Potts is the takeaway here. Natasha fucking Romanov. Like Christ, if it were Steve, I could take it. Because going from me to Steve, that’s a pretty straightforward fuck you, you know? Like, I’ve worked out what I’m looking for in a relationship, and you’re not it, so now I’m dating someone who’s the complete opposite and we’re so fucking happy together – because can you imagine? They’d be, like, the singularly most wholesome couple ever. It’d be awful. But Natasha fucking Romanov. Not to say we’re the same person, but there’s a lot more overlap going on there. So Pepper leaving me for her? It’s like say hmm, you’re basically what I want, only not quite good enough, so I found someone who does you, only better.

“That’s not even the best part, though. You want to know what the best part is? They’re banging, right, which I’m not mad about per se, because honestly, I’d have to be balls-deep in patriarchal bullshit to not see that as a little pot-kettle. Thing is, by and large, I have sex often and with whomever catches my eye and is up for it. But Pepper? Unless I’ve been a seriously bad influence, and I don’t think even I can take credit for that, that’s not a thing she does. Really goes in for that having a deep emotional connection stuff. Like, we knew each other for years, both nearly died a few times, and dated for a month, knew each other fucking backwards and sideways before we slept together. Which is fine, her prerogative and all that. Point is, it’s been what, two weeks since Pepper and I broke up? Say she’s being industrious and spending every waking moment with Natasha. That’s still not enough time for her to get to that point with someone. So – going a little Sherlock Holmes here – once the impossible has been eliminated and all that – she’s been seeing Natasha for more than two weeks.

“Christ, I sound like the fucking Taylor Swift song here, why haven’t you cut me off yet? Either you’re an honest-to-dicks a saint – long-standing theory of mine, but this would be pretty definitive proof - or you glazed over halfway through and just have a really good poker face, in which case I’m not mad, but I may have to make poker nights a thing, because you and I could totally kick Thor and Steve’s asses. Clint might be a more formidable opponent, but we can work on that.”

“I don’t know how to play poker,” Bruce says. Christ, it sounds stupid, and he’s kicking himself as soon as the words are out of his mouth. But his brain’s working on overdrive, because he knows that opening up like this is not something Tony does often, or perhaps ever, and he needs to make damn sure he gets this thing right the way he’d need to make sure he got triple bypass surgery right, because the consequences are going to be just as dire if he doesn’t. So maybe his full brainpower wasn’t funneled into the creation of that one sentence that leaked out, because it was already trying to work on something bigger. He holds up his hand, though, to cut Tony off, because otherwise he’s going to latch on to the poker comment and bury the whole conversation. “No, that’s not what I meant. That is, it’s true, I don’t know how to play poker, but that can wait. Do you have any hard-and-fast plans for the afternoon? Because I’m thinking we should spend it building an elaborate pillow fort, watching sci-fi B movies inside it, and calling out particularly egregious scientific inaccuracies therein. Also, there should be some throwing bonbons at the TV in retaliation. I am, however, open to suggestions.”

“You know what I was saying about sainthood? No longer a trace of doubt, I’m going to have to talk to the appropriate people to make this official – do you think the pope is vested with that kind of authority? Because I have a good feeling about the latest one, I could totally see him coming on board with that, and then afterwards we could take a victory ride around Rome in my Camaro. Unless he has his own Camaro? I mean, he doesn’t seem like the type, but maybe he’s got layers, like you. Ok, amendment to my earlier statement - I hope he does have one, because then we could have fast and furious races around the Vatican – it would be legendary. Which reminds me, have you seen Plan 9 from Outer Space? Legendarily terrible film, we definitely need to start there. It’s a damn shame Pacific Rim isn’t out on DVD yet – that would totally merit inclusion on account of being sci-fi, even if isn’t terrible, because that movie was just awesome. An assessment, I might add, which has absolutely nothing to do with that Dr. Gottlieb character nor any alleged thing I have for professorial types or British accents.”

 

._x_.

 

He’s got a halo of bonbons littered around him like the crater of a very sugary asteroid, has ruined what he’s fairly sure was his last clean shirt, has lost all feeling in his right leg, and he can’t remember the last time he was this blissfully happy. 

The bonbons are probably at least a little bit his fault. He did suggest them. He does not, however, claim responsibility for throwing bonbons at Tony while the man chased him around the pillow fort, because Tony started it and it was only self-defense, really. When they’d plunked back down in front of the first (4th) Star Wars movie again, not two minutes later, Tony’d hopped back up declaring that they’d been on the right track before, but they needed phasers. And, as Bruce pointed out, failing air vents, tunnels in their pillow fort. The logical conclusion of this idea, naturally, was that they ought to fill squirt guns with cranberry juice, the closest they were getting to fake blood without a trip to the grocery store, start at opposite sides of what was now more of an urban sprawl than a fort, and see which man could take out his target first. He’s still not precisely sure who came out the winner in the ensuing firefight, but they both wound up covered in cranberry juice. Incidentally, this had the unintended effect of making them both look like they’d entered a wet T-shirt contest. Which may have been why Bruce had caught Tony’s eyes sliding the length of his frame which was… interesting. When they’d collapsed in a graceless heap, giggling and taking turns squirting cranberry juice into each other’s mouths, Tony’s had the revelation that they’d not watched Sharknado yet, which, considering the goal of the afternoon, was a crime against humanity. Ten minutes in he was leaning on Bruce, and another five and he’d claimed Bruce’s legs for science and set up shop in his lap. Half an hour later and Tony was fast asleep.

He could stay here, if he wanted, switch off the movie and fall asleep here with Tony, probably get the best sleep he’d had in years and maybe also check off a few boxes next to things he’s been wanting to do for longer than he’d like to admit. Dream of waking up and being this unabashedly ridiculous and ridiculously happy again tomorrow, which could probably also be an actual thing, since neither of them have work.

Only he can’t, because this morning he put finger-shaped dents in a metal pan, which is something most people who aren’t Steve and Thor can’t do. Something the Other Guy could do, but that Bruce Banner can’t. Couldn’t, until this morning, apparently. And he needs go down to the lab and figure out what the hell is going. Because this time it was a pan, but it could’ve been someone’s hand, could’ve been a friend’s neck. Could’ve been Tony.

He wriggles out from under Tony, depositing his frame on the floor as gently as he can. And then he realizes he can’t really bear the thought of him waking up alone and confused at 4am, which, considering it’ around 6pm now, is a highly probably scenario. He scribbles a quick note: “Sharknado is too terrible to weather alone. In the lab or in bed, depending on whether it’s past two or not.” And finds a blanket to drape over him so he won’t be cold. And then bolts for the lab before he does something truly stupid, like kissing Tony on the forehead. 

It would be fascinating, really, from a scientific standpoint, if it didn’t make him want to cry. 

He’s been running and rerunning tests for the past three hours and coming up with the same damn data points. All exact, all as expected, al lined up nicely in a row so he couldn’t miss them if he tried. All pointing towards basically the worst thing that could have possibly happened.

The simple, gradeschool explanation is that the thing with the pan wasn’t an isolated incident. All the strength tests, all the cell regeneration simulations he’s run with tissue samples are consistent with what happens to his body when the Other Guy pays a visit. Thing is, the Other Guy’s not in, so Bruce Banner should not be able to lift the steel lab table with one hand and his cells should not react to a simulated bullet to the chest like it’s a particularly icy snowball. But he can, and they do.

Like he way saying, fascinating. He’d thought the sort of powers that came with the Other Guy pushing him out of the driver’s seat were only made possible by the physical transformation that accompanied these joyrides. Apparently, that theory had been way off base. Unless the change had occurred at the cellular or molecular level – in which case, a transformation might still have occurred, one in which the new cells or molecules were able to perfectly mimic the shape and essential functions of the cells or molecules they replaced such that his appearance didn’t change, his arteries didn’t clog with overlarge blood cells, but his abilities and properties still underwent a serious Jekyll-Hyde metamorphosis. He hadn’t realized this was possible. According to the laws of physics and also biology, it really shouldn’t be possible. Under any other circumstances, this would be the sort of puzzle he’d love to play with, something he’d study inside and out until he’d turned out all its secrets, a new bauble of a problem he was lucky to have stumbled across.

Trouble is, this little puzzle is a timebomb if he ever saw one. Because Bruce knows better than most people that no experiment ends with the easy primary school answer. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to find out what happens when you feed cocaine to rats or what happens when you accidentally expose yourself to really, really high levels of gamma radiation. When the results come in, you don’t get to check a box after “confirmed hypothesis” or “refuted hypothesis,” call it a day, and wash your hands of it, because that’s not how science works. There are always ramifications, implications, complications. Nothing happens in a vacuum and every discovery, no matter how abstract the original research, has the potential to cause a ripple effect formidable to put a hurricane to shame. The last step in scientific method, the part they don’t teach you in gradeschool, is damage control.

Damage control for his own goddamn stupidity, his selfishness. Because, as Tony is so fond of reminding him, he’s a pretty bright guy. He’s seen the data, he knows the score, and he should have fucking seen this coming from day one. Bruce plus a permanent residence, Bruce plus other people, Bruce getting close to anyone – it always ended in the Other Guy showing up and leaving him a wake of carnage and a burning need to get the hell out of dodge. What the hell did he think was going to happen? 

He knows the answer to that question, of course. Knows he was a goner from time on the helicarrier when Tony told him the Other Guy had happened for a reason, could be controlled, could be a force of good even, looking so goddamn earnest because he believed ever fucking word. Bruce had wanted to believe him then, wanted it badly enough that he came back to the Tower after the Other Guy cleared out, and back with Tony once the imminent destruction of New York City was off the table. And then Tony had happened, properly and without the distraction of the world being in peril, and Bruce had wanted to stay so badly that he had actually convinced himself that he could, right up until the point when the hard, cold data stared him straight in the face and said he absolutely couldn’t. Let his feelings crowd out his logic, like that was something he could afford to do.

This morning? He realized the Other Guy’s destructive powers were paying an extended visit. Discovered he had no fucking idea why, or how, or how to control it. Could’ve surmised that his potential to hurt or kill the people in the immediate vicinity, which, incidentally, were the people he cared about most in the world, had increased exponentially. And he hadn’t even made it into the lab to begin to fix it until nine-odd hours later. Why? Because Tony had said please. 

 

_.x._

 

“Jarvis? Can you call Tony?” And now I’m talking to the AI, he thinks.

“Certainly, sir.”

The lab speakerphone rings for what feels like ages. And then Tony’s answering machine clicks on. “If you’re a one-eyed pirate who shall remain nameless because and only because of the efforts of his formidable legal team, you can hang up now. Otherwise, you know me, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. And Iron Man. I’m sure I have a good reason for missing your call. But if you still think I should drop everything to listen to what you have to say, leave a message, and I’ll get back to you. Eventually.”

Bruce isn’t quite sure whether to laugh or cry.

“Sir, if I may, I hardly think Mr. Stark would extend that system of prioritization to you.”

“Yeah, well. In that case, it’s probably better if you tell him goodbye for me.”

He’s already cleared out all his petri dishes and test tubes, and makes to close the last of the simulations of his computer, but another window opens, a black screen with a play button in the center and “Watch Me” printed simply across the top.

“Jarvis, you’re not going to be able to change my mind.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, sir. Although Mr. Stark never tires of boasting about the quality of my programming, I am not immune to the sort of glitches found in veritably every type of computer.”

Bruce hits play. 

A security feed of Clint and Tony fills the screen.

“Tony,” Clint says.

“Augh.” 

“Don’t make me get Thor.”

“Ok, fine,” Tony says, and sits up. He looks like hell. “You’re right. I can’t keep Bruce here and get drunk off my ass. And I’m not making him leave – where the fuck is he going to go? Back to Kolkata or some other place with fuckall for protection against deadly diseases, not to mention basic amenities or the resources a mind like his should have at his disposal? Back on the run from that sonuvabitch Ross? And, I mean, the army, but out of the two, Ross sounds like the bigger threat here. Fifty bucks says Bruce was banging his daughter or something, because seriously, no one’s gotten that worked up about a fugitive criminal since Javier. It’s just not natural. Point is, Bruce is staying here as long as he wants to.”

Bruce powers down the computer manually and turns away from the screens. 

“He had no idea what he was getting himself into, Jarvis.”

“With all due respect, sir, I believe that is still a call he would have preferred to have been able to make for himself.”

 

_.x._

 

Packing doesn’t take long. All he needs is a rucksack, some cash, and a water bottle. In the end, he’s not quite sure what makes him come back and tuck the Starkphone into his jacket pocket. Selfishness, probably, or a general lack of resolve.


	9. I Was a Fool (In which there are rude awakenings, bombshells, black magic, and dangerous liaisons.)

There’s a shark poking him in the stomach. Only now it’s a tornado. And now it’s a shark. And either way, it’s decidedly not cool.

“God, make up your fucking mind – which is it, shark or tornado?”

And then he’s very much awake but there’s still a very human hand trying to get in another jab to his stomach. He bats it away with a “Jesus fucking Christ, I’m up, ok?” which, not his best line, but “’Morning, Doctor” had been on the tip of his tongue, and he never would have lived that down, so he’s counting it as a relative win. 

“See, told you. Not drugged,” Clint says, emerging from behind several pillows he’d ostensible been using as a Tony-shield. “Probably. Do I still look like a shark?” Tony properly sits up to see who he’s talking to and spies Steve, wearing his worried face, and Thor, who also looks decidedly less jolly than usual.

“Clint, I don’t know what to say. When did our relationship graduate to a level where you wake me up by jabbing me in the stomach instead of shooting arrows at me? It’s all so sudden – I’m going to need some time to reflect. In fact, I might need to sleep on it, which, funnily enough, I was trying to do before, and are we under attack? No, stupid question – Cap’s not wearing his business face, so we totally aren’t. So what’s with the search and rescue party to wake me up when I’m actually sleeping, which, have you met me, is a big deal? Where’s Bruce? He would totally back me up here.”

“Tony,” says Steve, “You were asleep for 27 hours. Clint worked out that your vitals were fine and that you weren’t in a coma, but you wouldn’t wake up. We were really worried.” And now Steve’s doing that thing with his face, and Tony can’t even pretend to be mad that everyone was apparently keeping a bedside vigil for him.  
“Ok, right, I’m sensing the involvement of sincere emotions here, and you know how I feel about those. But I’m fine, see? “ He disentangles himself from a few pillows and stands up, for emphasis. “Like, Clint’s looking absolutely nothing like a shark or a tornado right now. Much more like a bastard, really. Wait, what – Clint worked out? Himself? Like, ok, you probably actually have the training to do that, but how come no one just asked Jarvis?”

“The thought did occur to me, what with the little I know of modern Midgardian medicine. And yet when called upon, he did not answer. Clint sought to make contact with him through various portals, but met with no success.”

“Jarvis. Is nonresponsive. Jarvis. So help me god, Thor, is that what you’re telling me? Are you sure we’re not under attack? Because me being out cold for 20-odd hours and, more importantly, Jarvis being non-fucking-responsive is sounding a lot like we’re under attack – ”

“Tony. We did a sweep of the rest of the house and the surrounding area. There’s no sign of forced entry, anywhere. SHIELD’s cameras outside the tower didn’t catch anyone or anything suspicious. If we were under attack, whoever was behind it is long gone, and we’re not in any immediate danger.”

“Didn’t think you’d want medics or SHIELD agents crawling all over the tower while you were out,” Clint added. “Or touching Jarvis’s programming.”

Tony just blinks and sits down hard on the arm of the sofa, because of course they had it under control without him but also, what Clint just said sounds suspiciously like somehow Tony’s ended up higher on his priority list of loyalties than the super secret boy band managers for whom he actually works, and when did that happen? And Steve’s not directly employed by SHIELD per say, but apparently he came to a similar conclusion. And Thor hasn’t even been on this planet for more than a few months, tops, but is evidently light-years ahead of just about everyone else in terms of understanding Jarvis, because he totally just called him “him,” not some variation of “it” and Tony could hug all of them. So naturally, he has an abiding need to change the subject before he actually does. “Right, so I need to go figure out who fucked with Jarvis so I can hunt them down and threaten them with pointy and just generally very frightening weapons. Before arresting them, Cap don’t look at me like that. Oh, and right, afterwards, there should also probably be some investigation as to why I slept for that long without the involvement of alcohol, because that’s new, so I’m going to grab Bruce – where the fuck is Bruce, by the way? I was thinking the whole needing a doctor to determine I wasn’t dying thing would sort of be Bruce-necessitating, not to snub your very special skillset, Barton but – aha!” He brandishes a note that had likely been lost among the pillows before. “He’s in the lab. Of course he is. He might even had a lead on what the fuck is going on here, so we’ll be in the lab running all of the tests if you need us.” And now he’s up and walking and gesticulating wildly because he’s had years of practice with this whole distracting thing, and if he can just make it to the elevator, then he’s fucking golden. “Call me if there’s pizza. Or Thai. Actually, call Bruce. My phone’s covered in cranberry juice, and earlier model, 38 percent chance it’s not exactly functional anymore. Long story.” And now he’s pushing the elevator button a million times, because he may have drunkenly reprogrammed it to come faster when one did so a few years back and it’s actually pretty awesome. He’s keeping it that way, thank you very much.

“About that. Before you head down, we need to talk,” says Clint. “Preferably in the kitchen.” 

And then the elevator doors ding open. He’s going to chalk it up to some kind of personal growth that he doesn’t make a break for the lab right then and there. “Oh my god, is this an intervention? Because I haven’t even done anything to merit it this time, and that totally not fair. Are they coming in the kitchen too? Because if they are, that definitely makes it an intervention, and it is way too early for that. Also, I don’t have time for this sort of shit right now, because Jarvis.”

“It’s 8pm, Tony. But Thor and I are going to stay in the den and watch a movie, and it’s not an intervention. I promise.”

“Aye,” says Thor, “we have been told that we ought to watch the Titanic. Barton feels it is would be a grievous mistake not to see it together within the first week of our relationship, as I am told it is hailed as something of an epic romance—”

“Barton, why the fuck would you recommend that for a new relationship? It’s sad. Pepper cried. Pepper. Cried. When we watched that movie. Pepper. Wait, what? Relationship? Oh my god, the sly bastard. Bruce spent the whole fucking day with me yesterday and didn’t say a goddamn word. Oh my god. Thor. Be gentle with him – he’s a national icon, and if you hurt him, the entire U.S. army will probably try to beat you up afterwards, and my friend’s in the army, so I don’t want you to decimate them. Except General Ross. He’s totally free game. But no, that’s great, and it’s about fucking time, seeing at Thor’s been making Bambi eyes at you since you walked through the door, and don’t look at me like that Capsicle, I know you got that reference because Disney has been making movies since the dawn of time. But also, sincere emotions, so I’ll hand over the remote to you two love birds, and because I’m feeling magnanimous, I’ll throw in the accompanying and seriously awesome fort Bruce and I made yesterday, too.”

“Ah. So you didn’t just decide to build a pillow fort and then fall asleep in it. By yourself.”

“I resent that implication, Barton – I have long since mastered the art of eccentric and would be fully capable of rocking the situation if I had built this space station with my own two hands, but, you know, credit where credit is due and all, it was Bruce’s idea. Which I’m sure he’d deny if he were here. But he's in the lab sorting this mess out, and also I should really be in the lab helping him do that, so Stars and Stripes, Thor, enjoy your classic and truly depressing whirlwind of a period piece – yeah, yeah Barton, I know, you need to give me definitely-not-intervention before I leave."

Once they’re in the kitchen, Clint takes a long pull on his omnipresent thermos and says, “I need to tell you—”

“Turns out Natasha beat you to the punch line with that one, actually. When I called during sleeping hours yesterday and she picked up Pepper’s phone. Thing is, I get it. You guys are bros, or possibly ex-more-than-bros, depending on what actually happened in Budapest, I’m emotionally volatile, telling me probably seemed like a shit idea. And on account of Bruce is a fucking saint, and also, having bigger concerns like Jarvis having been attacked and potentially hacked beyond repair, I’m totally ok with letting the whole you not telling me before thing go. So there’s that. Christmas has come early for you this year. Glad we had this chat. I’ll be in the lab –”

“No, it’s about Bruce –”

“Shit. Is he ok? Because you guys would have been leading with that if he wasn’t ok, right? Whoever broke in – I wasn’t even kidding about letting Thor have a go at Ross, and that is a sentiment that I would extend to anyone who laid a finger on him—”

“He left. Last night. His phone’s not here, but it’s been used recently. Stark industry password encryption protection and fingerprint activation, so we can be fairly sure he took it with him and used it himself. Cleared some shit out of his room, too, and you know the security measures on his floor. He wasn’t kidnapped or coerced into leaving. He’s safe. And he can call us if that changes.”

“He – fuck. You’re sure he wasn’t kidnapped?” He can feel his eyes are doing that thing that’s definitely not crying because there is no actual falling of tears involved, but there might be some wet glassiness in play. And there’s no way Clint doesn’t notice, but he doesn’t say a goddamn word. “They don’t know, yet, do they? Steve and Thor?”

“They think he’s in the lab. He doesn’t need our help. I think he’d want them to get some happy couple time with no one’s world crashing down. I’ll tell them tomorrow.”

._.x._.

Jarvis is fine. So maybe it takes an hour, takes /him/, Tony fucking Stark, an hour to get him back and running again. So maybe it also necessitates playing AC/DC, the Sounds, the Strokes, and the Pixies at unholy decibel levels because their voices are grating enough to keep him grounded in the task at hand and block out everything else. So maybe he spends that hour of checking and rechecking every piece of code for damage with the aid of some of his earlier programs, and then exhaustively searching for traps which might be activated by bringing Jarvis back online having an adrenaline rush of the proportions he’s not had since he found himself carrying a war head into a certain wormhole. Jarvis comes back online. And he’s fine. He tells Tony so. 

But he has no fucking clue what happened. How someone managed to get into the system without even touching any of the firewalls, because they’re all intact, which makes no fucking sense, except for explaining why no alarms when off and none of the typical protocols he created to respond to hackers’ assaults were activated. Why there was no actual code added to any of Jarvis’s programs, just a bunch of symbols strewn throughout, without any placement or structure corresponding to any coding language he’s ever heard of. And incidentally, which the interwebs purport to have never encountered before in all of history on his fair planet, ever.

Jarvis has very little to offer by way of additional information or other possible explanations. He’s effectively been offline since a conversation he had with Bruce the night before. Jarvis already analyzed his record of the exchange for microexpressions or any coded language that might support a Bruce-was-kidnapped-or-coerced hypothesis, and since he found neither, the footage is officially getting categorized as not useful for the current investigation underway and also not something Tony wants to see right now, or, you know, ever, really.  
The adrenaline’s wearing off. The immediate issue of ensuring Jarvis wasn’t irreparably damaged by aliens and/or terrorists has been dealt with and he’s now encountering what bears a striking resemblance to a dead end in the logical next step of raining hellfire and brimstone upon whoever was responsible. And the particular cocktail of everything happens so much that was the past 48 hours is beginning to generate thoughts far louder than the lab’s surround sound stereo can match.

Which is really the fatal design flaw with the whole compartmentalization thing he has going on. Because he can file loads of things away in the to-deal-with-at-an-indeterminate-date-and-preferrably-with-a-lot-of-alcohol area of his brain, which is quite useful when he needs to get rid of emotional distractions. Like he did a few hours ago. Trouble is, he’s not terribly good at keeping track of just how many issues he’s filed away or when he’s about to exceed the storage space capacity, so, in the event that there’s absolutely no metaphorical space left, they tend to burst out in a spectacularly violent and overwhelming fashion and all demand attention at once. Not unlike all the flood of post beating its way into the Dursley’s quiet suburban home one the day Harry finally received his letter from Hogwarts.

There’s the whole Pepper left him thing, only now it’s compounded with the Pepper found someone who’s like him 2.0, and there’s a good chance he consequently should not expect any functional romantic relationships in the near future, or you know, ever. Incidentally, with regards to the possibility of any camaraderie with Natasha happening again, he probably shot that horse in the face with his last phone call, which is a shame, because she has a rather good sense of humor when she’s not chewing him out. Then there’s the whole realization that the people living under his roof actually care about him a lot with the simultaneous appraisal of the fact that he’s been ignoring them in favor of spending every hour of daylight with Bruce and every hour he couldn’t sleep boning attractive strangers he never planned to see again, to the point where he was the last to see Steve and Thor were dating and Clint wasn’t sleeping, like, at all. Speaking of Bruce, there’s the whole fact that he’s not fucking here anymore. Possibly because he didn’t plan to stay, but probably because Tony’s combination of insensitivity, self-centeredness, and the fact that during their last day together, he’d taken it upon himself to drop his latest self-made issue and then his very much passed out self in Bruce’s lap. And to top it all off, some sonuvabitch decides this is a great week to try to take an admittedly well-made and well-aimed shot at his oldest friend, and incidentally, the only constant he has in his life. Had.

So right about now, he really needs a drink. Or maybe ten. And look at that, Bruce did him a favor, really, because now he’s not bound to a promise that would leave him to deal with all this bullshit sober.

._.x._.

He ends up at another dive bar, because he may have borrowed Clint’s wallet and there’s a good bit of cash inside in an impressive range of different currencies, in fact, but tonight of all nights he is not angling for a run-in with the paparazzi. It’s no Las Vegas, he notes wryly as he walks in. But he still hasn’t decided whether he’s even looking to take someone home tonight or just to get drunk off his ass, so it doesn’t much matter. 

Fifteen minutes and four drinks later, he’s taken the edge off but can still remember the events that led him to the bar, so his work here is still far from done. He’s ordering a Molotov cocktail shot, because getting a drink that’s on fire while his gross motor skills are still around seems like the thing to do, when out of the corner of his eye, he sees Loki fucking Silvertongue in the doorway. Swaggering into the bar like he owns the place, naturally.

Tony is smack dab in the middle of the bar and wearing a goddamn leather jacket and easily the hottest piece of ass in the place. Which is to say, he’s hard to miss. So it throws him for a loop when Loki doesn’t even spare him a withering glance. Instead, he makes his way to a brunette on the other side of the room, seeming for all intents and purposes to be in the process of propositioning her. 

Tony doesn’t really take well to being ignored. So it takes all of thirty seconds before he’s spinning Loki around and greeting him with a “Hey, Reindeer Games, what happened to your headgear? Did you finally become secure in your manhood, or did the Allfather say you couldn’t have it back til you learned to play nicely with the other kids on the playground?” Which, ok, maybe not the best thing to say to a supervillain with daddy issues who tried to subjugate the entire human race last time he was in town. But it gets his attention.

“Please, pardon my acquaintance’s interruption. You see,” Loki drawls, “he was in something of a state of inebriation when last we met. I may have exploited this circumstance to convince him that I was a prince of a small nation, falsely accused of murder and enjoying one last decadent romp before returning to a show trial in my country of origin. If you’ll excuse us.” Then Loki’s got an arm slung casually across his shoulders but a vice grip on his forearm and is steering him towards the door. 

And either personal space is not a thing on Asgard, which, honestly, would explain a lot about Thor, or Loki just doesn’t give a fuck, because suddenly the man’s pinning him against a brick wall. And right, that whole bit where Loki threw him out of a window last time they hung out is all coming back to him now, and maybe that bit about Odin was just this side of overkill.

“I am a god,” he snarls, his face inches from Tony’s, “and you would do well to remember it, Stark. Speak to me like that again and I will rip out your tongue and feed it to you.” A few tense seconds pass, Loki’s eyes aflame and boring into his own. And then he backs off. And giggles.

“Oh, your face, Stark. It was precious. Do you really think me so fickle that I would be prone to such violence for the sake of a few poorly crafted barbs? As for the sentiment fueling them, allow me to shoot that horse in the face. Oh, I know, you’ve not said anything about your fear and confusion over my presence here, but I’m sure you would’ve gotten round to that line of questioning eventually. What are you doing here, Loki? Who are you going to kill next? What’s the master plan for world domination this time? My business on Midgard is my own, although I can assure you, it involves no literal bloodshed nor conquering of peoples by force. And, presuming that you are averse to spending the night bleeding out in one of the nearby gutters, I should think the rest of your evening would be much more to your liking if we parted ways here and you neglected to mention our meeting to my – well, to any of your fellow Avengers.”

“Ok, come on, God of Lies. If you want me to believe that, you’d better have some damn good proof to back it up. Or were you just counting on me to take you up on your ultimatum regardless of whether I believed you? Little problem there – I’m not exactly well-known letting a sense self-preservation stop me from doing what I want. Not that I think things would get that far, seeing as the rest of Earth’s mightiest heroes are on their way as we speak – including, of course, your brother--” 

“Oh, but they aren’t, are they?”

“Um, hello, Starkphone right here. Of course they are--”

“And you would call that a poker face. Your friends aren’t coming; I’d wager they don’t even know you’re out, or in danger. I’d puzzle out why, but I find I don’t care. The fact remains that your life rests delicately in my hands – and you are fortunate enough that all I ask of you in return for it is a blood oath regarding your nondisclosure of my presence on Midgard. An offer I would advise you to take before I change my mind.”

“Ok, the threatening I get, because that’s just textbook megalomaniac right there, but what’s with the negotiating? Why not just kill me now?”

“Truly, you do yourself a disservice when you say you have little regard for your own life. Did it never cross your mind that the reason for my presence in this godforsaken bar might not be so different from your own? My bloodlust is not so animalistic that I cannot respect the inelegance of unnecessary bloodshed. And I would be loath to kill you over such a trivial matter – you are one of the more interesting specimens I have come across on Midgard.”

“So your excuse is that you’re a lover, not a fighter? That’s fucking priceless. As for your distaste for unnecessary bloodshed, let’s revisit your latest stint on Midgard, shall we? Tell you what, I’ll throw you a bone and focus on the deaths you orchestrated intentionally and were directly responsible for. SHIELD agents at the base – unplanned, since I’m guessing from your sloppy getaway you didn’t know the roof would cave in. So far, so good. Then, the guards at the gala in Germany – armed and all, but with the end goal of incapacitating them, I’m not seeing the advantage of killing them over using tranquilizers. Oops. But I’ve got to say, my real beef is with you killing a friend of mine. Phil Coulson. Major hole in your I’m a utilitarian murderer persona, because you fucking stabbed him, so that’s on purpose and directly responsible for his death in one fell swoop. Apparently you also took out a guy’s eyeball, though, so the method’s just really par for the course. What I’m hung up on here is what precisely did killing him accomplish? Instantaneous death, incapacitation’s obviously your end game. But a slow death, where the guy’s still able to get in a shot at you with the bastard child of a bazooka and a flamethrower? That’s out of left field. Did he look too much like your dad in the light, and you just couldn’t take it anymore?”

“I did not kill Agent Coulson. My aim is precise, and had I wished him dead, he would have been so, and instantaneously. If you must know, I needed a little more time for some of my other preparations, and having the provision of his care and worry over his seemingly serious condition distract the remaining Avengers on the helicarrier would have filled that slot rather nicely. That is, if someone had not intervened and made it look as though he bled out. Perhaps a little chat with your dear director is in order?”

._x_.

One very angry phonecall to Fury and a good bit of not-very-dignified laughter on Loki’s part later, his story had checked out. They’ve moved on to the blood oath, because Loki was right – he hasn’t got any backup on the way – and despite what he or anyone else might say about his sense of self-preservation, he’d like to live through the evening.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer gave him unrealistic expectations. The oath itself involves no intense chanting or dramatic throwing one’s head around as the spell comes to fruition. It does involve a good deal of Tony’s blood ending up all over Loki’s hands, which isn’t doing much for the serial killer vibe he tends to exude anyway. He’s about to tell him as much, when Loki pops an index finger into his mouth and sucks, and all coherent thought ceases to be an option.

To his credit, Tony’s brain supplies him with an imaginative range of reasons why this should not be nearly as hot as it is. Supervillian, Thor’s baby brother, and that is my fucking blood that he just put in his mouth are high up on the list. His cock remains unphased by his valiant attempt at logic. 

“That will be all, Stark.” Loki turns on his heel, then pauses. “Unless…”

“Yeah?” Jesus fucking Christ Tony, he thinks. Get it together.

“Unless,” he says, making his way back over to Tony, “you would favor me with an explanation of the function of this device.” Reaching out to plant his palm firmly against the arc reactor is not strictly necessary to communicate this, but Tony isn’t exactly complaining. Even if it means that he’s going to have some very suspicious blood stains to explain to the dry cleaners. “I must admit, it peaked my interest when it proved to be powerful enough to withstand the energy of my staff. I can guess that if I were to tear it from your chest, you would suffer, and yet, were that the entire story, your blood would not taste of metal.” The hand moves from the arc reactor, but stays pressed against the wall near Tony’s left temple.

“Do you want the long version or the short version?”

“I can think of a number of ways our evenings could be more aptly spent than in lengthy explanations.”

“Such as?”

“Are you going to furnish me with an explanation or not?”

“It keeps me alive.”

“Stark, there is brevity and then there is utter ambiguity, and that remark is--”

“Fine, it keeps the shrapnel from a bomb my surrogate father figure tried to kill me with from reaching my heart. Happy?”

“I see.” Loki actually looks a little taken aback, but his usual mask of composure quickly smoothes over the flicker of emotion. Tony’d know, he’s pulled that trick often enough himself. “Perhaps the reason why you did not alert your compatriots to my presence when first you laid eyes on me this evening is interesting enough to merit my consideration after all. Are you so narcissistic that you could not bring yourself to condemn one in whom you saw a kindred spirit, or did you simply go soft when you laid down your arms and your former crown, Merchant of Death?”

“Right, I think you’re misunderstanding me. I’m here because you dragged me outside, press-ganged me into participating in some pretty damn macabre black magic bullshit, and then shoved me up against a wall. For the second time this evening. Not because I’m looking to spend the evening crying into our cups and commiserating about daddy issues. So if that’s everything…?”

“Not two minutes ago I felt your pulse racing under my fingers; I hardly think that is the only reason you are still here.”

“Yeah, well, that’s neither here nor there. And I wouldn’t take it personally. Sure, it’s up there, but fucking your brains out might not even be the stupidest thing I’ve ever wanted to do. Anyway, if that’s not on the table, I’d like to go back inside before this gorgeous woman I was talking to thinks I pulled a runner--” 

That remark had, he reflected, as Loki’s lips descended upon his own, been delivered with a respectable amount of genuine sarcasm.


	10. You Went Away (in which there are good, responsible decisions, bad coffee, and a seriously unwelcome familiar face)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god. I am so sorry for the delay of all delays in updating this story. Life happened. (But I do I intend to finish it and will try to update every month until I do.)

A quick scan of the newspaper he fishes out a a bus station dispenser doesn't reveal any headlines about giant monsters or supervillians. Which means he hasn't left the Avengers down one man as they fight insurmountable odds. Or, alternatively, he has, but they handled it, and then SHIELD did a really good job of covering it up. 

So there's that. And it might just might be the only thing Bruce has going for him at the moment. 

He has a paper cup of decaf coffee, a six-hour wait for the next bus, and a sneaking suspicion that the man with the formidable biceps across the way is watching him. 

Which are varying degrees of not good at all. 

Long travel, long waits, sporadic access to food, sleep deprivation, soreness in quite nearly all of his limbs that settles in like a second skin- these things he's used to. He's been there, done that, gotten his t-shirt contaminated with some fatal disease and had to burn it for the safety of everyone in the immediate area. 

But the man across from him is a serious problem. Because maybe he doesn't like Black Sabbath and just keeps staring at Bruce because he thinks the t-shirt he's wearing is an abomination. But it's more likely he's noticed that Bruce has some money and doesn't look like he can hold his own in a fight. 

Normally, he'd be doing some deep breathing and thinking about the quietest way and least conspicuous place to knock the guy out. But normally he doesn't have Herculean strength to worry about. If he tries any sort of self-defense, he could kill the man. Easily. He's seen flashes of memories of what the other guy's done to trees, and it's not pretty. So if the man tries anything, he's going to have to sit back and let him beat the shit out of him. And he has no idea what that sort of impulses that might stir up. 

He's not really sure where the sort of half-consciousness that takes the wheel when he Hulks out is living at the moment, now that the Hulk- related powers are here all the time. It could have just been subsumed into his general consciousness. But it could be drifting quietly in the back of his mind, waiting until his emotions run hot or his heart rate jumps. And there's no way to tell for sure until the burly man throws the first punch. 

Maybe he ought to tell someone where he is and what's going on while he still has a phone in his possession. 

Not Tony. Who is the first person who comes to mind and the last person he should tell. Because texting will give the recipient a lock on his location. And if Tony knows where he is, the man's going to do something stupid like offering to fly down and pick him up, and he's going to do something stupid like letting him. 

Maybe Clint. He's definitely awake right now, despite the time difference. And of the people currently living in the tower, historically, he's the least likely to try to mount a rescue mission if Bruce tells him what's going on. 

He types out a quick message: "The Hulk powers are apparently here 24/7 now. I need to get away from people until I can figure out why and how to fix it. I'll text in a day or two when I've reached my destination." He hits send, then returns his phone to his back pocket before he gives in to temptation and texts Tony. 

And then he waits. 

.x. 

The burly man is no longer staring at him. Instead, be appears to be engrossed in latest issue of Ms. Magazine. 

But suddenly there's an elderly woman at his elbow, in a royal purple coat, matching gloves, and an impressively large hat. 

“Excuse me. You seem like a nice young man—could I ask a favor of you? If it’s not too large of an imposition.” 

“Of course.” 

“I’m meeting my daughter here— she's getting married, you see, and I may be on the other side of the country, but I can't very well miss my only child's wedding, can I? And the dear is picking me up so I don’t have to rent a vehicle here, so I don’t want to make her park and come in looking for me, but I don’t really feel comfortable waiting in the parking lot of a strange town all by my lonesome. Not with evening falling. If I had a strapping boy like you with me, though, I should think most people would leave me alone. Would you mind terribly waiting with me? She shouldn’t be more than a half-hour.” 

“I’d be happy to.” 

"Are you headed somewhere nice?" she asks as they walk out to the parking lot. 

"I guess you could say that." Bruce holds the door for her. 

"You don't want to talk about it. That's fine. You're not relocating after a breakup, are you?" 

"No, no. Do I look like I am?" His hand goes reflexively to the back of his neck, but he laughs and meets her gaze. He can't remember when he stopped reflexively ducking his head, averting his eyes in situations like these. But apparently he has. 

"No, you just look like you've been through hell. But that's public transportation in America, isn't it?" 

That startles a laugh out of Bruce. Maybe it's why he smiles and says, "So tell me about this wedding." 

The woman beams at him. "Did you know my daughter met her wife at a public lecture about the neurocircuitry of attachment and bonding in different types of voles? All these nice young things who meet at the French Riviera or the theater or even a bookshop or a coffee shop for fuck's sake, if you'll pardon my French, and she has to go meet in a room full of folks who care overmuch about voles. Oh, I don't mind. Not really. They're mad about each other. Neuroscience and each other, they get so caught up in it they forget the rest of the world spinning alongside them. Do you know what I mean?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” 

.x. 

“There she is! And about time, too. Right over there – see how handsome she looks,” she says, grabbing his arm as she points to the far side of parking lot. Bruce turns his head towards where she's pointed to see a woman in bulky forest green coat and collared shirt pulling up in a silver Subaru. She is quite handsome. 

And then there's a shark prick in his left arm. And darkness. 

.x. 

Bruce blinks into an unfamiliar room, sterile and bright white. Not unlike a hospital or a government laboratory, which is not really doing wonders for his heart rate. He closes his eyes, tries to take a few deep breathes and exhale slowly. Because right now might be the actual worst time to have a panic attack. 

He opens his eyes again, trying to take in the details of the room, of his situation. Like he’s cataloguing results from an experiment. Slowly, one thing at a time, not jumping to conclusions and trying to keep emotion out of it as much as possible. His brain feels foggy, like he’s been awake for hours on three hours of sleep. Probably from whatever tranquilizing compound he must had been injected with, he realizes. He can’t feel any serious injuries. He’s in a chair that’s partially reclined, like one you might find at the dentist or in a surgery room. He doesn’t seem to be restrained in any way. 

The room is well-lit from overhead, industrial lights. White floor, ceiling, and walls. Only one chair besides his own. Which suggests that only one person at a time spends much time in this room, and is therefore either a great sign or a terrible one. On the one hand, if he’s going to be one-on-one with a captor, he’ll have a much better shot of reasoning or bargaining with them. And a better chance of taking them out without killing them, but the odds still aren't really good enough for him to risk that. On the other, if literally only one person uses this room, they could be the only one who knows where it is or that whatever building it’s part of exists, which would drastically reduce his odds of being rescued anytime soon. A few steel desks and some lab equipment, which adds some momentum to the laboratory hypothesis he’d begun with. Geared towards chemistry or biology research of some kind if he had to hazard a guess. And a number of large computer touch-screen holograms that would make Tony drool. Most likely homemade, and certainly ones that are not available at your local Best Buy. A bad sign. Because it means either his captor made them themselves, and is therefore intellectually on par with Tony, or they have sufficient infrastructure, connections, and funding to support a team of scientists capable of creating and maintaining a highly sophisticated operating system and interface. Neither option is really a win for his odds of escaping. 

He hears footsteps and tenses immediately. He breathes out, slowly, counting. Whatever’s coming, he needs to be present and calm for it if he wants to get out in one piece. And keeping his damn mouth shut, if at all possible, probably wouldn't hurt. 

Whatever he was expecting, it was not this. 

"It's about bloody time." A posh voice at the other end of the room, oddly familiar, but he can’t think why. Maybe if his brain were firing on all cylinders right now. 

He pushes himself up and turns in the chair towards the voice, and okay, maybe there are no major injuries, but he definitely feels a few new bruises on his arms. But that doesn’t matter at all right now. Because outlined in the doorway, in shirtsleeves and slacks this time, but still unmistakably recognizable, is Charles fucking Livingston. 

“It’s a good job my plans weren’t time-sensitive,” Charles continues irritably, making his way over to where Bruce sits. “You would’ve made a right mess of everything, had that been the case.” 

“I can’t really blame you, I suppose. Truth be told, he wasn’t really part of my plan, either. At least not in that capacity. Although, while they do heavily advise against meeting one’s heroes, they’re much more vague on the subject of shagging them, so honestly, I believe I am still in the clear. Oh, don’t look at me like that now, Doctor Banner. He really is a good lay, wouldn’t you say?" 

So much for keeping his heart rate down. Bruce is digging his fingernails into his palms hard enough to draw blood before he can even think what he’s doing. He can hear blood rushing in his ears and his pulse has reached a speed that no amount of breathing exercises can do much to ameliorate. 

Charles must see something in his face or posture, because he tilts his head to the side. “Oh? _Really,_ Doctor Banner? Now that is unexpected. Nearly twelve hours after you realized you were a danger to everyone around you – exponentially more so than usual, that is – and you still hadn’t left the tower. What in god’s name were you doing if you two weren’t shagging?” 

Charles smirks at his own comment, gaze still focused intently on Bruce. Probably watching him try to stop himself both from taking a swing at the man and from having a panic attack. Both are a near thing right now. 

And then Charles' expression smoothes, all emotion wiped away in one fell swoop. He pulls out a tablet, checks the screen, and then makes a complicated series of gestures with the hand not holding the tablet. A blue light emanates from the device—perhaps part of some new homemade tech, like the computers, but Bruce has never seen anything quite like it before. It seems as though the light is not coming from the screen, but rather from the whole device. Which reminds him a little of the tesseract. 

"Hm, yes. Just as I thought." 

Charles holds the tablet out for Bruce to see. It's full of readings. His heart rate, skin conduction, blood pressure. "Allow me to impress upon you the gravity of your situation. You are, as I just verified, incapable of transforming, even with an extremely elevated sympathetic nervous system. Which is to say, the physical transformation that makes you nigh invulnerable cannot occur because the two halves of your consciousness have been temporarily merged. Yes, yes, I know I haven't decked you out in sensors like a Christmas tree; Magick accomplishes the same thing much more quickly and elegantly. The point is, you are no longer untouchable by death." 

He withdraws the tablet and pockets it. And then sighs dramatically. 

"I do apologize. For everything, but particularly for the conversation we just had and what I am about to do. I am, in truth, a great admirer of your work on gamma radiation. And please believe when I say that if there were another way for me to achieve my aims, I would have taken that route. 

"In addition, know that I was speaking honestly about my surprise earlier, if more candidly than I am wont to do. I believe he would have you, now, if you asked him to. But I take it you didn’t. Which is a shame, really, because now… well, now I need you to be of use.” 


	11. Hype (in which there are magics tricks, sword brandishing, bad news, and great coffee)

When Tony wakes up, he's playing little spoon to a god. Which definitely makes the top ten for weirdest circumstances in which he's woken up, ever. 

But also, his head is still attached to his shoulders and he wasn't even thrown out of any windows last night. So there's that. 

He turns his head around as far as he can towards Loki without actually breaking free of the arm around his waist. Or the very toned torso pressed against his back. A strategic decision he tells himself he makes only because it will make Loki's realization that they're spooning priceless when he wakes him up. And not because it's kind of nice. 

"Morning, sunshine." 

For about three seconds, Loki looks peaceful, and much less like he killed eighty people in three days. 

Then his eyes flash open, filled wild panic. He clutches hard at the closest thing available which, incidentally, is Tony.

And Tony's suddenly torn between oh shit, oh shit, maybe hopping into bed with Loki without really knowing what his intentions towards him were or if his homicidal tendencies were entirely behind him wasn't the best choice, because shit, he's strong, and oh shit, shit fuck bears, I remember waking up this way, Jesus.

Loki sucks in a few quick, ragged breathes and then seems to properly take stock of his surroundings. 

"Hey. It's 11:14AM on October 14th and you're in Manhattan. You're safe." 

"I am _fine_." 

"That's a shitty lie coming from someone with your reputation, but I'll let you have this one because fuck knows I never want to talk about the nightmares. And also because you have larger problems. Like the fact that I'm in your bed." 

"That's a problem?" 

"I, oddly enough, have yet to regret the decisions that led me here. Well, the most immediate of those, anyway." 

"It has certainly been," he pauses, partly to give Tony a decided hungry look and partly because he is a melodramatic shit, "entertaining." 

"Yeah, well. The thing about that is, I don't think the other Avengers would apply the same adjective to this situation. Especially Clint, who would normally be in my corner for this sort of thing, or at least think it was funny, but I have a feeling he won't in this case because of the whole bit where you're involved. I think he's still pissed he didn't get a chance to put an arrow through your eye the last time you were in town. And I may have texted them all something to the effect of 'I'm about to make a really questionable life choice, please check to see if I'm alive tomorrow' when I decided to go home with you. 

"So. Normal people would just text me, but the six of us have some creative ideas about boundaries. So we should probably be ready for anything." 

"So you do possess some modicum of self preservation. You continue to surprise me." 

"Hey. I would totally resent that if a lot of my plans didn't rely on the assumption that people would underestimate me. Also, that's what you got from that?" 

"I have been a practicing Mage for longer than you have been on this earth; I should think that the protections I have laid on this apartment would be sufficient." 

"So about how you banking on your Mage cred to see you through last time and how that worked out." 

"I'm maintaining a posh apartment in upper Manhattan, not leading an alien army in battle. The circumstances are hardly comparable." 

"I'm just saying. I honestly don't know whether Thor would be perversely pleased that my first instinct wasn't to try to kill you or whether he'd want to have my head because of some Asgardian ideas about honor, but I really, really don't want to find out." 

"Please never use 'perversely' in the same sentence as you make mention of Thor ever again." 

"Because you still think of him as your brother?" Tony asks, because self-preservation is really overrated anyway. 

"He is no brother of mine." 

"Uh-huh." 

"Has it occurred to you that I am still perfectly capable of following through with any one of the threats I made last night?" 

"Yeah, but you're not going to." "And why is that, precisely?" 

"Because somehow I haven't had a chance to blow you yet, and I may not have the nickname to prove it like _some people_ , but I'm really, really good." 

"You could also leave, if you're so concerned that you might be found out." 

"So I'm trying to parse that and determine whether that's you insulting my prowess in the art of fellatio or whether you're actually suggesting something out of concern for my wellbeing. Or, alternatively, is that the posh way of kicking me out? Because if you want me to leave, you can be blunt. I hope you've heard enough about me to appreciate that this isn't my first rodeo." 

"It may interest you to know that you have trace magic from an enthrallment spell on your hipbone. Whose signature is of Midgard." 

"Is that a no on the insulting my prowess front? Wait, what." 

"Trace magic. On your hipbone. That one, to be precise," he adds, trailing his hand along the anatomy in question. 

"You know, it actually hurts to admit this, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Genius, not a Mage. Enlighten me." 

"Particularly powerful spell work leaves a trail." He frees his hand to gesture as he speaks, a green ghost image of the movement following him as he does. Tony tries very hard not to let his expression reflect how much he missed the contact. "Unless one takes special care to mask it, which the Mage in question did not. Enthrallment spells are not unlike Midgardian science fiction's notions of mind control, if one has the prowess for that sort of nuance, to bend the enthralled's actions to their whim without compromising the contents of their mind. If they are but an amateur to the art, the effect is more akin to a puppeteer with a puppet: complete control, but less finesse and a far less capable pawn under one's influence." 

"Spoken like someone who's pretty damn proud of their skill in that area." 

"I believe I've earned that right." 

Of course you have. Because I couldn't have gotten shitfaced and gone home with someone who didn't have a history of murder and impressive mind control exploits." 

"Flatterer." 

"Silvertongue. Just making an effort to keep up." 

And then the room is filled with the opening chords of "Back in Black." 

"Shit. Shit fuck bears." 

"You don't recall where you left your phone." 

"I know it's in the pocket of my jeans. But at the time, I was a little preoccupied with taking said jeans off as fast as possible, so they could be anywhere in your apartment, really." 

"Allow me." Loki extends his hand in a beckoning motion, and after a few moments, the pants in question come floating into view. 

Tony stares for a few seconds. The phone stops ringing. 

"Sometime you need to explain to me how that doesn't break physics. But right now, I have a text to send before whoever was calling, in all likelihood someone of the Avenger persuasion, decides to show up on your doorstep because I'm taking too long to return their call." 

He holds his palm out expectantly. Loki makes no move to return his phone. 

And then it rings again. 

Tony does not get his phone back in the ensuing scuffle. Instead, he winds up with a still very naked Loki straddling him and pinning his wrists above his head. Not that he's complaining. 

He arches his hips up against Loki and uses the moment of distraction to flip them and free his hands. And then he nearly falls off the bed as he lunges for his phone. 

"Not Clint. Thank fuck." 

Loki quirks an eyebrow in response. 

"It was your brother calling, actually, so I should probably at least text him to make sure we're not under attack. This is Thor we're talking about here, so if we were under attack, I think we might have noticed how everything had suddenly gone very blonde, loud, and angry in New York. But it's the principle of it. As one of Earth's mightiest heroes, even if I want to fall off the grid and hide out in a super villain's lair, I have to pick up my phone. Eventually." 

Tony rolls over and slumps face-down on the mattress, his face buried in a pillow. "Ugh, _responsibilities._ " 

"Right." He rolls onto his back and props himself up against the pillow. "Texting people to see if we're under attack and also say, 'hey, I'm not dead.'" He turns to look at Loki, his fingers continuing to zoom across the touch-screen. "Question: how does that enthrallment bit work, exactly? Are we talking long-distance, could be literally anyone except for the part where they know Jedi mind tricks? Or more like might have knocked me on the hip on the metro, possibly anonymous, but a marginally smaller net of suspects because witchcraft?" 

"For spell work that intricately laid, they would have needed to adhere the Magicks directly to your skin." 

"I was afraid you were going to say that." 

"Have you made a habit of sleeping with the enemy?" 

"I only sleep with people who can keep up. And if their motivation for needing to do so is that they're on the opposite side of a particular scuffle, well. That keeps things interesting, right? But I mean, if you'd led with the seducing last time you were in town, things might have gone a lot differently, if that's what you are asking." 

"Do you ever idly wonder how it is that you have survived to this age?" 

"Dumb luck and sheer willpower? And probably a healthy dose of ingenuity. I might ask the same of you, seeing as you're about a billion years old. And you might be one of the few people who's made more questionable life choices than me." 

"You like it." 

"You're a master of not answering questions posed to you, you know that?" 

"Are you quite finished texting?" 

"I can be." 

"Because I would quite like to see if your aforementioned skill set lives up to your boasting." 

.x. 

There isn't so much a knock at the door as a resounding crash when the window is shattered and Steve fucking Rogers tucks and rolls through amidst a cascade of broken glass. 

A small part of Tony's brain is shouting that he should be leading with an apology or some at least placating remark, but what comes out is, "Steve, you have the shittiest timing of any human, ever." 

"Tony?!" 

"The one and only. You know, I thought you might collectively wait a little longer for me to get back to you before you before you mounted a rescue mission. But I guess it's reassuring to know there's a quick response time just in case next time I'm actually dying? Well, quick-ish. If there had actually been any peril involved, I'd probably be dead already. So I take that back. Fifty points from Hufflepuff for inadequate mobilizing efficiency." 

"We weren't looking for you." 

"Steve Rogers, I'll have you know I'm mortally offended. I've been missing for how long-- I mean, I could've been bleeding out in an alley, you know-- and you weren't even trying to find me? Wait, we?" 

And then Thor bursts in through the open window. Which is theory should be less dramatic, because there's no glass to shatter, but isn't really, because it's Thor, and he's brandishing Mjolnir in one hand and an honest-to-dicks Lord of the Rings sword that's glowing bright blue in the other. 

Which looks very familiar. Oh. Oh, shit. 

"Friend Tony! What business have you here? Are you well? How did it come to be that you in shackles, yet jovial in appearance?" 

"Long story. Well, actually not that long. I was having sex." 

Thor laughs, deep and sincere. Steve's face does that thing where it kind of pinches in on itself. 

"I am glad to hear you are well. However, we were in truth searching, with the aid of the weapon you and Doctor Banner fashioned for that purpose, for my brother Loki--" 

And if those aren't the magic fucking words. Between god-status and magic, Loki's surely been able to hear the whole damn conversation, but chooses that moment to come back into the room. 

He's wearing a green, floor-length silk dressing robe and holding two mugs. He makes to hand one to Tony and then seems to realize for the first time that his hands are still cuffed to the bedposts, so that isn't quite going to work out. He makes a complicated gesture and both cuffs vanish. 

"Tony," Steve says, "are you--" 

"Oh, I should probably mention that I'm not under mind control and I'm here of my own volition. Turns out Thor's little brother is just really good in bed." 

He glances at Loki, who looks like he's a hairs breadth away from going on another killing spree and oh, right, maybe he should have taken it easy with the brotherly love language around the two gods with severe anger management problems. 

He has a diverting comment that’s not even about sex on the tip of his tongue, but Thor speaks before he can. 

“Loki, brother. How did you come to be in Midgard, and to what purpose? Why did you not send word that you were once more free?” 

“You could not be bothered to attend my trial, to see me sentenced; why should you care that I was sprung from my cage?” 

Tony can see the train wreck that’s about to be the rest of this conversation a mile off. It’s a kind of weird, out-of-body experience not to be the one responsible. 

“The Allfather forbade me--” 

“When has lack of permission been more than a fly at your elbow when you set your mind upon a course of action?” Loki laughs, but there is no mirth in it. “Tell me true, for it does not befit a gilded prince to sully his mouth with lies; was the thought of seeing me for what I am truly so unbearable? You have beheld carnage and the horrors of war, and barely blink; yet one glance at me without my masks, and you are but a boy again, hiding your face in Mother’s skirts?” 

“In truth, I did not trust my tongue, nor my countrymen; for had I been there, I fear they would not have been able to look upon you and see naught but an inverse of me.” 

“Did you believe that your absence would be sufficient to correct their bias?” 

“It was all I could do.” 

“You let the sentence stand.” 

“You nearly destroyed all that was Midgard, every citizen and child, every bird and beast reduced to ash or subjugation.” 

“I was not well.” 

“And now?” 

“And now you would call me brother and condemn me to indefinite imprisonment in the same breath; you have lost the right to any claim on me you once held. My wellbeing is not your affair.” 

Thor falls silent, looking for all the world like a kicked puppy. 

Tony blinks. Then he looks down and sees his coffee sitting forgotten in his cupped hands and makes an executive decision that this all is _not_ allowed to go sideways before he gets his caffeine. 

"Oh, Loki, you remember Cap, right? I hear you two hung out in Germany that one time. Without me. Rude. But anyway, you should make up or something because he's probably gonna be joining your family soon." 

Steve blushes crimson.

Tony sips his coffee. It's fucking perfect. He's not sure if Loki has a French press squirreled away in the apartment somewhere or if he just Magicks cappuccino into existence. Either way, he'd definitely bed Loki again just for the coffee. 

"Our love is but a new bloom, only having blossomed upon my return from Asgard. I had meant for these glad tidings to be the first words from my mouth when next I laid eyes upon you. Do not, I implore you, hold the thought to your breast for a moment that I would ever willfully exclude you from my life, for it would be but a string of hollow victories without your light in it." 

"And what of my darkness? What if I have no light left for you or any other soul in the Nine Realms, having spent all of it on glamours and cheap tricks in the pursuit of an acceptance always held just beyond my reach? 

He pauses, seems to recover. Tony can pick out the exact moment when the careful mask slips back into place. "And what care I for news of your new bedmate? I shouldn't wonder that you would just as soon couple with the entire armed forces if they praised your prowess in battle, but why you should think that either is any concern of _mine_ \--" 

"Speaking of shit that lights up," Tony transitions flawlessly, thank you very much, because he would like to have pants on before there's an honest-to-dicks brawl, "Thor, how long have you two been walking around New York with that sword? Because I mean apparently it works, which you know, cool, but it was designed as more of a thing to use when you get to a site or hideout so you can tell if there are major villains nearby. What you did was basically the equivalent of walking around a beach with a metal detector looking for lost treasure. Only with a city of 3 million people." 

Loki smirks. Until Thor looks at him meaningfully and says, "Except that I found it, did I not?" 

"Speaking of shit that is, statistically speaking, damn near impossible, how the hell did these two get in here?" The _because I thought you said you had this place warded within an inch of its life_ goes unsaid. Tony may be reckless and desperate to change the subject, but he's not suicidal. 

"It is most peculiar," Loki says, eyeing Steve warily, "That a mortal should slip through my spellwork so easily. Particularly when I designed my wards to respond to all known variations upon the human genome. And to my-- to Thor, of course."

And Tony smacks a hand to his forehead. Because _of course_. 

"I'd ask how you got your hands on sensitive information about genome-mapping, but I feel like the answer is probably more magic that shits on my understanding of physics. 

"Bit of a sore spot, but Steve's biology isn't exactly part of the known human genome. In other news, congratulations, Steve. You're literally the only reason Thor was able to get in here. Your prize is two emotionally unstable gods and a naked playboy." 

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. "At least Thor and I were _trying_ to do some good this morning--" 

"I beg your fucking pardon. We," he motions to himself and Loki, "Were both doing a lot of good. I mean, Loki here has done wonders for my liver, seeing as he's the reason I only had like two drinks last night. And I stopped him from killing anyone last night-- not really necessary, seeing as he said he's on his best behavior this visit-- and from ruining any other mortals for future partners in bed. I think we both deserve medals, honestly." 

Steve looks like he's got a few suggestions as to where Tony could stick his hypothetical medals, but before he can say anything, Tony's cell rings again. 

He glances at the caller ID and nearly has a heart attack. 

"Bruce? Are you ok? Were you kidnapped? Are you somewhere safe, or at least safe for 300-some pounds of mean and green? 

"Uh-huh. 

"No, no, what makes you think that? 

"Yeah, of course. I'll be there in however long as it takes to get to Latveria. Or less. Flight times don't really factor in the effect of caffeine or, you know, me being involved. 

"Yeah. Good talk." 

He sets the phone down slowly, because otherwise he's going to throw it across the fucking room as hard as he can, and he does not have time for repairs right now. 

"Jesus fucking Christ in a Camaro. I told you he was kidnapped. Clint said he wasn't. Jarvis said he wasn't. I thought I was overreacting, needed to distance myself from things to be able to look at them objectively-- but of fucking course he was kidnapped. 

"Oh, right. So. Bruce was kidnapped. I'm supposed to bring a cool two billion for the ransom, but honestly, that's a little on the low end if you're threatening me, so it's probably a trap. 

"And don't even think about it, Capsicle. I'm supposed to come alone. 

"Oh, also. Apparently they found a way to repress the Hulk? Which, you know, useful, only Bruce is actually a possible casualty of this op now. 

"So for chrissakes, if you're sending someone in after me, make it someone who knows how to be covert? Usually I'd say Natasha, but she's pissed at me right now. Maybe Clint? Actually," he turns and favors Loki with a too-bright smile, "You can turn invisible and shit, right? Wanna come along? It'll be like getting breakfast after but with less awkward conversation and more explosions." 


End file.
